Journal article
Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams
- Abstract:
- Relativistic electron-positron plasmas are ubiquitous in extreme astrophysical environments such as black-hole and neutron-star magnetospheres, where accretion-powered jets and pulsar winds are expected to be enriched with electron-positron pairs. Their role in the dynamics of such environments is in many cases believed to be fundamental, but their behavior differs significantly from typical electron-ion plasmas due to the matter-antimatter symmetry of the charged components. So far, our experimental inability to produce large yields of positrons in quasi-neutral beams has restricted the understanding of electron-positron pair plasmas to simple numerical and analytical studies, which are rather limited. We present the first experimental results confirming the generation of high-density, quasi-neutral, relativistic electron-positron pair beams using the 440 GeV/c beam at CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator. Monte Carlo simulations agree well with the experimental data and show that the characteristic scales necessary for collective plasma behavior, such as the Debye length and the collisionless skin depth, are exceeded by the measured size of the produced pair beams. Our work opens up the possibility of directly probing the microphysics of pair plasmas beyond quasi-linear evolution into regimes that are challenging to simulate or measure via astronomical observations.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.9MB, Terms of use)
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(Preview, Supplementary materials, pdf, 3.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-024-49346-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 5029
- Publication date:
- 2024-06-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-05-31
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2007897
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2007897
- Source identifiers:
-
2039959
- Deposit date:
-
2024-06-13
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Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Arrowsmith et al
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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