Anthony L. Peratt

Characteristics for the occurrence of a high-current, Z-pinch aurora as recorded in antiquity

The discovery that objects from the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age carry patterns associated with high-current Z-pinches provides a possible insight into the origin and meaning of these ancient symbols produced by humans. Part I deals with the comparison of graphical and radiation data from high-current -pinches to petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and megaliths. Part I focused primarily, but not exclusively, on petroglyphs of some 84 different morphologies: pictures found in laboratory experiments and carved on rock. These corresponded to mankinds visual observations of ancient aurora as might be produced if the solar wind had increased (T. Gold) at times between one and two orders of magnitude, millennia ago. Part II focuses on the source of light and its temporal change from a current-increasing Z-pinch or dense-plasma-focus aurora. Orientation and field-of-view data are given as surveyed and contributed from 139 countries, from sites and fields containing several millions of these objects. This information allows a reconstruction of the auroral form presumably associated with extreme geomagnetic storms and shows, based on existent geophysical evidence, plasma flow inward at Earths south polar axis.

Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies

The model of the plasma universe, inspired by totally unexpected phenomena observed with the advent and application of fully three-dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations to filamentary plasmas, consists of studying the interaction between field-aligned current-conducting, galactic-dimensioned plasma sheets or filaments (Birkeland currents). In a preceding paper, the evolution of the interaction spanned some 108-109 years, where simulational analogs of synchrotron-emitting double radio galaxies and quasars were discovered. This paper reports the evolution through the next 109-5 × 109 years. In particular, reconfiguration and compression of tenuous cosmic plasma due to the self-consistent magnetic fields from currents conducted through the filaments leads to the formation of elliptical, peculiar, and barred and normal spiral galaxies. The importance of the electromagnetic pinch in producing condense states and initiating gravitational collapse of dusty galactic plasma to stellisimals, then stars, is discussed. Simulation data are directly compared to galaxy morphology types, synchrotron flux, Hi distributions, and fine detail structure in rotational velocity curves. These comparisons suggest that knowledge obtained from laboratory, simulation, and magnetospheric plasmas offers not only to enhance our understanding of the universe, but also to provide feedback information to laboratory plasma experiments from the unprecedented source of plasma data provided by the plasma universe.

Evolution of the Plasma Universe: I. Double Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and Extragalactic Jets

Cosmic plasma physics and our concept of the universe is in a state of rapid revision. This change started with in-situ measurements of plasmas in Earths ionosphere, cometary atmospheres, and planetary magnetospheres; the translation of knowledge from laboratory experiments to astrophysical phenomena; discoveries of helical and filamentary plasma structures in the Galaxy and double radio sources; and the particle simulation of plasmas not accessible to in-situ measurement. Because of these, Birkeland (field-aligned) currents, double layers, and magnetic-field-aligned electric fields are now known to be far more important to the evolution of space plasma, including the acceleration of charged particles to high energies, than previously thought. This paper and its sequel investigate the observational evidence for a plasma universe threaded by Birkeland currents or filaments. This model of the universe was inspired by the advent of three-dimensional fully electromagnetic particle simulations and their application to the study of laboratory z pinches. This study resulted in totally unexpected phenomena in the data post-processed from the simulation particle, field, and history dumps. In particular, when the simulation parameters were scaled to galactic dimensions, the interaction between pinched filaments led to synchrotron radiation whose emission properties were found to share the following characteristics with double radio galaxies and quasars: power magnitude, isophotal morphology, spectra, brightness along source, polarization, and jets. The evolution of these pinched synchrotron emitting plasmas to elliptical, peculiar, and spiral galaxies by continuing the simulation run is addressed in a sequel paper.

On the evolution of interacting, magnetized, galactic plasmas

The advent of three-dimensional, electromagnetic, and fully relativistic particle simulations allows a detailed study of a magnetized, rotating plasma, galaxy model. When two such models are simulated, an interaction yielding results resembling observational data from double radio sources, including the emission of synchrotron radiation, are obtained. Simulation derived morphologies, radiation intensities, frequency spectra, and isophote patterns are directly compared to observations. The constituent plasma parameters associated with the source Cygnus A are found to bene=1.8×10−3 cm−3,T=2.8 keV,B=20–30 gamma, with a small population of electrons accelerated to GeV energies by a rotation induced electric field. The results of these simulations, involving a computational resource of five CDC 7600 and five Cray-1 computers, strongly supports an inhomogeneous version of the Klein world model.

Pulsed electromagnetic acceleration of exploded wire plasmas

A simple analysis of the dynamic state of a current‐conducting high‐density plasma column, resulting from an exploded wire between the conductors of a rail‐gun accelerator or one or more wires strung between the anode and cathode conductors in a pulsed‐power generator diode, is given on the basis of a one‐dimensional magnetohydrodynamics model. Spatial distributions of the current density, magnetic field, temperature, and particle density are calculated as well as the temporal current, voltage, and impedance histories. The model self‐consistently treats the accelerator load transition through its solid, melt, vapor, and plasma states in the presence of its supply source and feed network. Once formed and accelerated, the plasma state calculations show expansion cooling across the self‐induced magnetic field if the Bennett condition is not satisfied. The model predictions are compared to two experimental situations. The first involves the delivery of some hundreds of Joules of stored energy to the wire load...

Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current

The discovery that objects from the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age carry patterns associated with high-current Z-pinches provides a possible insight into the origin and meaning of these ancient symbols produced by humans. Part I deals with the comparison of graphical and radiation data from high-current -pinches to petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and megaliths. Part I focused primarily, but not exclusively, on petroglyphs of some 84 different morphologies: pictures found in laboratory experiments and carved on rock. These corresponded to mankinds visual observations of ancient aurora as might be produced if the solar wind had increased (T. Gold) at times between one and two orders of magnitude, millennia ago. Part II focuses on the source of light and its temporal change from a current-increasing Z-pinch or dense-plasma-focus aurora. Orientation and field-of-view data are given as surveyed and contributed from 139 countries, from sites and fields containing several millions of these objects. This information allows a reconstruction of the auroral form presumably associated with extreme geomagnetic storms and shows, based on existent geophysical evidence, plasma flow inward at Earths south polar axis.

Z

Plasma science is rich in distinguishable scales ranging from the atomic to the galactic to the meta-galactic, i.e., the mesoscale. Thus plasma science has an important contribution to make in understanding the connection between microscopic and macroscopic phenomena. Plasma is a system composed of a large number of particles which interact primarily, but not exclusively, through the electromagnetic field. The problem of understanding the linkages and couplings in multiscale processes is a frontier problem of modern science involving fields as diverse as plasma phenomena in the laboratory to galactic dynamics.

-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source

With the advent of fully three-dimensional, fully electromagnetic, particle-in-cell simulations, investigations of Birkeland currents and magnetic-field-aligned electric fields have become possible in plasmas not accessible to in situ measurement, i.e. in plasmas having the dimensions of galaxies or systems of galaxies. The necessity for a three-dimensional electromagnetic approach derives from the fact that the evolution of magnetized plasmas involves complex geometries, intense self-fields, nonlinearities, and explicit time-dependence. A comparison of the synchrotron radiation properties of simulated currents to those of extragalactic sources provides observational evidence for galactic-dimensional Birkeland currents. >

Advances in Numerical Modeling of Astrophysical and Space Plasmas

The radiation spectrum for synchrotron-emitting electrons in galactic-sized Birkeland current filaments is analyzed. It is shown that the number of filaments required to thermalize the emission spectrum to blackbody is not reduced when a non-Maxwellian electron distribution is assumed. If the cosmic background radiation (CBR) spectrum (T=2.76 K) is due to absorption and re-emission of radiation from galactic-sized current filaments, higher-order synchrotron modes are not as highly self absorbed as lower-order modes, resulting in a distortion of the blackbody curve at higher frequencies. This is especially true for a non-Maxwellian distribution of electrons for which the emission coefficient at high frequencies is shown to be significantly less than that for a Maxwellian distribution. The deviation of the CBR spectrum in the high-frequency regime may thus be derivable from actual astrophysical parameters, such as filamentary magnetic fields and electron energies in the model. >

The evidence for electrical currents in cosmic plasma

Volcanic plumes on the Jovian satellite Io may be a visible manifestation of a plasma-arc discharge phenomenon. The amount of power in the plasma arc (~ 1011 W) is not enough to account for all the energy dissipated by the volcanoes. However, once a volcano is initiated by tidal and geologic processes, the dynamics of the volcanic plumes can be influenced by the plasma arcs. As initially pointed out by Gold (1979), plasma arcs are expected because of ~ 106 A currents and 400 potentials generated by the flow past Io of a torus of relatively dense magnetospheric plasma. We utilize our experience with laboratory plasma arcs to investigate the plume dynamics. The filamentation in the plume of the volcano Prometheus and its cross-sectional shape is quantitatively consistent with theories developed from laboratory observation.