Abstract
The onset and evolution of magnetic fields in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas is determined by several mechanisms1, including instabilities2,3, dynamo effects4,5 and ultrahigh-energy particle flows through gas, plasma6,7 and interstellar media8,9. These processes are relevant over a wide range of conditions, from cosmic ray acceleration and gamma ray bursts to nuclear fusion in stars. The disparate temporal and spatial scales where each process operates can be reconciled by scaling parameters that enable one to emulate astrophysical conditions in the laboratory. Here we unveil a new mechanism by which the flow of ultra-energetic particles in a laser-wakefield accelerator strongly magnetizes the boundary between plasma and non-ionized gas. We demonstrate, from time-resolved large-scale magnetic-field measurements and full-scale particle-in-cell simulations, the generation of strong magnetic fields up to 10–100 tesla (corresponding to nT in astrophysical conditions). These results open new paths for the exploration and modelling of ultrahigh-energy particle-driven magnetic-field generation in the laboratory.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the support of OSEO project n.I0901001W-SAPHIR, the support of the European Research Council through the PARIS ERC project (contract 226424) and the national research grants BLAN08-1-380251 (GOSPEL) and IS04-002-01 (ILA). A.F. acknowledges collaboration with T. Vinci (LULI, École Polytechnique). The work of J.V. and L.O.S. is partially supported by the European Research Council through the Accelerates ERC project (contract ERC-2010-AdG-267841) and by FCT, Portugal (contract EXPL/FIZ-PLA/0834/1012). We acknowledge PRACE for access to resources on SuperMUC (Leibniz Research Center).
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S.K., F.S., M.V. and A.F. conceived, designed and carried out the experimental measurements, A.F. conceived, designed and realized the analysis tools and performed the data analysis, A.L., J.V. and L.O.S. carried out the numerical simulations, A.F., J.V. and L.O.S. wrote the manuscript, V.M. provided overall supervision.
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Flacco, A., Vieira, J., Lifschitz, A. et al. Persistence of magnetic field driven by relativistic electrons in a plasma. Nature Phys 11, 409–413 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3303
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3303
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