Date of Award:
5-2013
Document Type:
Thesis
Degree Name:
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department:
Physics
Committee Chair(s)
Eric D Held
Committee
Eric D Held
Committee
W. Farrell Edwards
Committee
D. Mark Riffe
Committee
James T. Wheeler
Committee
Joseph Koebbe
Abstract
A code that solves the coupled electron drift kinetic and temperature equations has been written to study the effects of collisionality and particle trapping on temperature equilibration along magnetic field lines. A Chapman-Enskog-like approach is adopted with the time-dependent distribution function written as the sum of a dynamic Maxwellian and a kinetic distortion expanded in Legendre polynomials. The drift kinetic equation is solved on a discrete grid in normalized speed, and an FFT algorithm is used to treat the onedimensional spatial domain along the magnetic field. The dependence of the steady-state temperature on collisionality and magnetic well depths is discussed in detail. As collisionality decreases (increasing background temperature), temperature variations decrease. As magnetic well depth increases (at fixed collisionality), temperature variations along the field line increase.
Checksum
85f8a52da126080d8c0c4c4990daa52c
Recommended Citation
Sharma, Mukta, "Parallel Heat Transport in Magnetized Plasma" (2013). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1470.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1470
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Comments
This work made publicly available electronically on 5/2013