Space Plasma

Physics
 Space physics
• Space physics, also known as space plasma physics, is the study
of plasmas they occur naturally in the universe. As such, it
encompasses a far-ranging number of topics, including the sun,
solar wind, planetary magnetospheres and ionospheres,
auroras, cosmic rays, etc. Space physics is a fundamental part of
the study of space weather and has important implications not
only to understanding the universe, but also to practical
everyday life, including the operation of communications and
weather satellites. Space physics is unique from other fields of
astrophysics which study similar phenomenon, in that space
physics utilizes in-situ measurements from high altitude rockets
and spacecraft
 PHASE CHANGES
Description of Term for Phase Heat Movement During
Phase Change Change Phase Change

Heat goes into

Solid to Melting the solid as it
liquid melts.
Heat leaves the
Liquid to
Freezing liquid as it
solid
freezes.
 PHASE CHANGES
Description of Term for Phase Heat Movement During
Phase Change Change Phase Change

Vaporization,
Liquid to which includes Heat goes into the
gas boiling and liquid as it vaporizes.
evaporation
Heat leaves the gas
Gas to liquid Condensation
as it condenses.
Heat goes into the
Solid to gas Sublimation
solid as it sublimates.
 STATES OF MATTER
• The Four States of Matter

• Four States
• Solid
• Liquid
• Gas
• Plasma
 STATES OF MATTER
 Based upon particle arrangement
 Based upon energy of particles
 Based upon distance between particles
 Kinetic Theory of Matter
Matter is made up of particles which
are in continual random motion.
 STATES OF MATTER
SOLIDS

•Particles of solids are

tightly packed, vibrating
about a fixed position.

•Solids have a definite

shape and a definite
volume.
Heat
 STATES OF MATTER
LIQUID
 Particles of liquids are
tightly packed, but are
far enough apart to
slide over one
another.

 Liquids have an
indefinite shape and a
definite volume. Heat
 STATES OF MATTER
GAS
 Particles of gases
are very far apart
and move freely.

 Gases have an
indefinite shape
and an indefinite
volume.
Heat
 But what happens if you raise the
temperature to super-high levels…
between
1000°C and 1,000,000,000°C ?

Will everything
just be a gas?
 STATES OF MATTER
PLASMA
 A plasma is an
ionized gas.
 A plasma is a very
good conductor of
electricity and is
affected by
magnetic fields.
 Plasmas, like gases •
Plasma is the
have an indefinite
shape and an common state
indefinite volume. of matter
 STATES OF MATTER

SOLID LIQUID GAS PLASMA

Tightly packed, in a Close together with Well separated with Has no definite
regular pattern no regular no regular volume or shape
Vibrate, but do not arrangement. arrangement. and is composed of
move from place to Vibrate, move Vibrate and move electrical charged
place about, and slide freely at high particles
past each other speeds
Some places where plasmas are
found…

1. Flames
2. Lightning
3. Aurora (Northern
Lights)
The Northern Lights are a visual phenomena commonly
witnessed in the Great Canadian Northern rural outdoors.
During large explosions emanating from the sun, large
quantities of solar particles are thrown deep into space
forming plasma clouds. These plasma clouds travel
through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 Km
per second. As they near the planet, they are captured by
Earth’s magnetic field and guided towards Earth’s two
magnetic poles, the geomagnetic South and North Poles.
As the solar particles approach the Poles, they are
stopped by Earth’s atmospheric shield. A collision ensues
between the solar particles and the Earth’s atmospheric
gases creating a gas molecule emitted as a photon or light
particle. When several of these collisions occur
simultaneously, the result is Mother Nature’s light show
otherwise referred to as the Aurora Borealis or Northern
Lights.
The Sun is an example of a star in
its plasma state
 What Is It?
• A hot ionized gas

• The ‘fourth state of matter’

– Unlike gases, solids, or liquids, plasma does not contain
molecules

– Instead, it is a gas that is composed of ions

• Composes more than 99% of the known visible

universe
 So What’s In It?

• Some, or all, of the electrons in the outer

orbitals have been stripped away

• The result is a collection of ions and electrons,

which are no longer bound together
 What Did That Mean?

• Because the particles are not neutral:

– Plasma behaves differently then regular gases
– For instance, in the presence of electromagnetic
fields
 Who Found It?

• First discovered by Sir William Crookes, in

1879

• But it wasn’t called ‘plasma’ until 1928, when

Irving Langmuir coined the term
 Characteristics: Temperature

• Defines two kinds of plasma: Cold and Hot

• Refers to the electron temperature

• Ion temperature may be very different (lower)

 Characteristics: Density

ne
• Plasma (electron)
density
– The number of free
electrons per unit
volume
• Ion density
– Related to above by the
ne  Z ni
average charge state:
 Density
• Neutral Density
– In hot plasmas, this
quantity is very small,
but may still determine
no
important physics

• The degree of ionization ni

is given by:
 no  ni 
 Characteristics: Potentials
• Plasmas are excellent conductors
• Simple view:
– Due to the above, the electric fields in plasmas
tend to be very small
• Quasineutrality:
– On the one hand, we can assume that densities of
positive and negative charges are equal
– However, we can assume that electric fields exist
as needed for the physics at hand
Definition of a plasma
A plasma is a mixed gas or fluid of neutral and charged
Particles. Partially or fully ionized space plasmas have
usually the same total number of positive (ions) and
negative (electrons) charges and therefore behave
quasineutral.
Space plasma particles are mostly free in the sense
that their kinetic energy exceeds their potential energy,
i.e. they are normally hot, T > 1000 K.
Space plasmas have typically vast dimensions, such
that the free paths of thermal particles are larger than
the typical spatial scales --> they are collisionless.
Different types plasmas
Plasmas differ by their chemical composition and the
ionization
degree of the ions or molecules (from different
sources). Plasmas
are mostly magnetized (internal and external
magnetic fields).
• Solar interior and atmosphere
• Solar corona and wind (heliosphere)
• Planetary magnetospheres (plasma from solar
wind)
• Planetary ionospheres (plasma from atmosphere)
• Coma and tail of a comet
• Dusty plasmas in planetary rings
 Why Plasma:

Plasma: The fourth state of matter 

• The Nobel prize winning American chemist Irving Langmuir first used this
term to describe an ionized gas in 1927--Langmuir was reminded of the
way blood plasma carries red and white corpuscles by the way an
electrified fluid carries electrons and ion
• During the 1920's Irving Langmuir was studying various types of mercury-
vapor discharges, and he noticed similarities in their structure - near the
boundaries as well as in the main body of the discharge. While the region
immediately adjacent to a wall or electrode was already called a "sheath,"
there was no name for the quasi-neutral stuff filling most of the discharge
space. He decided to call it "plasma.“
• Plasmas are estimated to constitute more than 99 percent of the universe
Blood Plasma
• When blood is cleared of its various
corpuscles there remains a transparent liquid,
which was named plasma (after the Greek
word , which means ``moldable substance'' or
``jelly'') by the great Czech medical scientist,
Johannes Purkinje.
 What is Plasma?

If you remove an electron, which has a negative charge, from an atom you
produce an ion, which has a positive charge. Plasma is a gas which has a
substantial percentage of ions and electrons (charged particles) present (that
percentage can be anything from ~5-100%). Typically plasmas are produced
by adding energy to a gas until it "breaks down" - that is a sufficient number
of electrons and ions are produced. Plasmas are sometimes referred to as the
"4th state of matter" - At temperatures close to absolute zero, they are in
solid state, since adding energy (heat) to a solid gives you a liquid, if you
continue to add energy you get a gas, and finally adding even more
temperature, the kinetic energy of the particles becomes high enough to
ionize each other. In order to keep the ions and electrons separate and stop
them coming back together some form of energy must be continually
supplied. Typically plasmas glow, because some of the energy they absorb is
turned into light by collisions between electrons and neutral atoms.
• When they recombine (nucleus catching
electrons and having them in orbit), chances
are high that they are ionized almost
immediately, because of the high
temperature. So a plasma is in a dynamic
equilibrium of ionization and recombination,
depending on its temperature (and pressure
etc.).
 How plasma is different from an Ideal gas
As a plasma has both ions and electrons, it has no overall
charge, but the presence of charged particles means that a
plasma behaves very differently from a gas.
• The particles don't interact very much in ordinary gas while in a
plasma the particles interact strongly because of their charges
(opposite charges attract and similar charges repel).
• A plasma can conduct a current, which a gas can't do (even the
plasma in the near-vacuum of space) .
• Plasmas also react strongly to electric and magnetic fields that
give the plasma characteristics that are never seen in gases (e. g.
the curtain like appearance of the aurora, the movement of solar
flares)
• Like gas, plasma does not have a definite shape or a definite
volume unless enclosed in a container; unlike gas, under the
influence of a magnetic field, it may form structures such as
filaments, beams and double layer
• Plasmas may form "double layers" which consist of two
oppositely charged layers that can accelerate charged particle
to close to the speed of light
• Plasmas can also produce particle beams, and emit radiation
over all frequencies, from radio waves, light, x-rays and
gamma rays.
Earth's plasma fountain, showing oxygen,
helium, and hydrogen ions that gush into space
from regions near the Earth's poles. The faint
yellow area shown above the north pole
represents gas lost from Earth into space; the
green area is the aurora, where plasma energy
pours back into the atmosphere
Plasma arcs between the probes on a Wimshurst Machine. This device, invented in the early
1880s, has long been a popular laboratory demonstration of plasma. When the voltage
difference between the conductors exceeds the gap's breakdown voltage, a spark forms,
ionizing the gas and drastically reducing its electrical resistance. An electric current then
flows until the path of ionized gas is broken or the current reduces below a minimum value
called the 'holding current'
Dusty Plasma
In the VASIMR rocket, magnetic fields force the charged plasma
out the back of the engine, producing thrust in the opposite
direction. Image copyright: Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Plume (hydrodynamics), the form of effluent (an

outflowing of water or gas from a natural body of
water, or from a human-made structure)in water or
emissions in air

Plume of the Space Shuttle Atlantis after launch.

 Conditions
• A more precise definition is that a plasma is a
quasineutral gas in which many of the atoms or
molecules are ionized and exhibit collective behavior.
• Quasineutral refers to the uniform density (n) of
particles within the plasma and collective behavior
means that a plasma can undergo motions which not
only depend on local conditions but also on the state
of the plasma in more remote regions. To be
considered a plasma, a gas must satisfy the three
conditions
 Debye length
In plasma physics, the Debye length (also
called Debye radius), named after the Dutch
physicist and physical chemist Peter Debye, is
the scale over which mobile charge carriers (e.g.
electrons) screen out electric fields (Screening
is the damping of electric fields caused by the
presence of mobile charge carriers) in plasmas
and other conductors. In other words, the
Debye length is the distance over which
significant charge separation can occur.
 Debye length
In plasma physics, the Debye length (also called Debye radius), named after the
Dutch physicist and physical chemist Peter Debye, is the scale over which mobile
charge carriers (e.g. electrons) screen out electric fields (Screening is the damping
of electric fields caused by the presence of mobile charge carriers) in plasmas and
other conductors. In other words, the Debye length is the distance over which
significant charge separation can occur. A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius
is the Debye length, in which there is a sphere of influence, and outside of which
charges are screened. Plasmas generally do not contain strong electric fields in
their rest frames. The shielding of an external electric field from the interior of a
plasma can be viewed as a result of high plasma conductivity: i.e., plasma current
generally flows freely enough to short out interior electric fields. However, it is
more useful to consider the shielding as a dielectric phenomena: i.e., it is the
polarization of the plasma medium, and the associated redistribution of space
charge, which prevents penetration by an external electric field. Not surprisingly,
the length-scale associated with such shielding is the Debye length.
• Local deviation from quasi-neutrality due to
thermal motion
• Characteristic length scale for a test particle
to sense the electrostatic forces exerted on it
by the other charges
• The distance over which significant charge
separation can occur.
 Debye Sphere
• A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius is the Debye
length, in which there is a sphere of influence, and
outside of which charges are screened. Plasmas generally
do not contain strong electric fields in their rest frames.
The shielding of an external electric field from the
interior of a plasma can be viewed as a result of high
plasma conductivity: i.e., plasma current generally flows
freely enough to short out interior electric fields.
However, it is more useful to consider the shielding as a
dielectric phenomena: i.e., it is the polarization of the
plasma medium, and the associated redistribution of
space charge, which prevents penetration by an external
electric field. Not surprisingly, the length-scale associated
with such shielding is the Debye length.
• If an electric field is created in the plasma, the charged particles
will react to reduce the effect of the field. The lighter, more
mobile, electrons will respond faster to reduce the electric field.
If a plasma has excess of positive and negative particles, this
excess would create an electric field and the electrons will move
to cancel the charge.
• Debye length is inversely proportional to number density and
hence the shielding length decreases as the density increases.
This results because there are more electrons to cancel an
existing change distribution, and hence a shorter length scale to
reach neutrality in the plasma, as the density of the plasma
increases. On the other hand it will increase with temperature.
 Space craft charging
• The Debye length is helpful in understanding how a spacecraft
affects the space plasmas that surrounds it. In a collisionless
plasma, a space craft can develop a net negative charge, because
for equal electron and ion temperature, the electron flux is larger
(m_i/m_e)^1/2 than the ion flux, and the space craft potential
becomes negative. Solar radiation can liberate the photoelectrons
from the surface of spacecraft, often producing a sufficiently large
negative current that the spacecraft potential becomes positive.
Any net charge will perturb the plasma in the immediate vicinity of
the space craft, a region referred as a plasma sheath. The scale size
of the perturbed region will be Debye length. At distances larger
than Debye length, the plasma will be completely unaffected by the
presence of the spacecraft.
 Plasma Approximation
• The plasma approximation: Charged particles must be close enough together that
each particle influences many nearby charged particles, rather than just interacting
with the closest particle (these collective effects are a distinguishing feature of a
plasma). The plasma approximation is valid when the number of charge carriers
within the sphere of influence (called the Debye sphere whose radius is the Debye
screening length) of a particular particle is higher than unity to provide collective
behavior of the charged particles. The motion of particles can cause local
concentrations of positive and negatively charges. These charge concentrations
create long ranged coulombic fields that affect the motion of charge particles away
from charge concentrations. The elements of the plasma affect each other even at
large separations, giving the plasma its collective behavior.
Note: The Debye length is smallest natural scale in the plasma. This is because every
particle in plasma is effectively shielding every other plasma on the Debye scale. It
is therefore, characteristic dimensions of regions in which breakdown of
neutrality can occur in the plasma.
Plasma criteria
• When you apply a potential difference to a plasma, electrons and
ions will be attracted by the positive and negative electrodes
respectively. The electric potential generated by the electrodes will
then we screened out by the charged particles. The screening
decays exponentially as you go away from the electrode.
A debye length is the length by which the potential has decayed 1/e.
“L” in plasma means the characteristic length of the ''plasma'‘(the
order of magnitude of a system). That is, when we talk about space
plasma, L is in the AU order, in tokamaks L is in the order of meters,
in neon lamps L is in the order of centimeters...and so on.
The condition L>>(lambda)_d is one of the 3 criteria that separates a
common ionized gas from a plasma
 Summary
• A plasma has the following properties:
• It also contains charged particles
• The number of charged particles is large enough to allow for
electromagnetic interactions
• A plasma is quasi-neutral: the number of positive and negative
• charges is almost equal
• A plasma can interact with itself!
• The bahavior of a plasma is determined by electric and
• magnetic fields
• Large number of different types of waves
 Contd…..
• 99% of the matter in the universe is plasma,
• The upper atmosphere, lightning, the liquid core of the
• Earth are natural plasmas in our direct environment,
• Technical applications
• Plasma fusion: containment of a hot plasma in a magnetic
field.
• Chemical industry, e.g. cyan synthesis
• Welding of metals
• Implantation of semiconductors
• .....
 Concept of Temperature
• Plasma temperature is commonly measured in kelvins or
electronvolts and is, informally, a measure of the
thermal kinetic energy per particle.
• Very high temperatures are usually needed to sustain
ionization, which is a defining feature of a plasma.
• The degree of plasma ionization is determined by the
"electron temperature" relative to the ionization energy.
• At low temperatures, ions and electrons tend to
recombine into bound states—atoms, and the plasma
will eventually become a gas.
 Contd….
• Because of the large difference in mass, the
electrons come to thermodynamic equilibrium
amongst themselves much faster than they come
into equilibrium with the ions or neutral atoms.
For this reason, the "ion temperature" may be
very different from (usually lower than) the
“electron temperature". This is especially common
in weakly ionized technological plasmas, where
the ions are often near the ambient temperature.
Based on the relative temperatures of the lectrons,
ions and neutrals, plasmas are classified as thermal"
or "non-thermal".
• Thermal plasmas have electrons and the heavy
particles at the same temperature, i.e., they are in
thermal equilibrium with each other.
• Non-thermal plasmas on the other hand have the
ions and neutrals at a much lower temperature,
(normally room temperature), whereas electrons are
much "hotter".
 Contd…..
• A plasma is sometimes referred to as being "hot" if
it is nearly fully ionized, or "cold" if only a small
fraction (for example 1%), of the gas molecules are
ionized, but other definitions of the terms "hot
plasma" and "cold plasma" are common. Even in a
"cold" plasma, the electron temperature is still
typically several thousand degrees Celsius. Plasmas
utilized in "plasma technology" ("technological
plasmas") are usually cold in this sense.
 Equation of motion
• Equations of motion are equations that
describe the behavior of a system in terms of
its motion as a function of time (e.g., the
motion of a particle under the influence of a
force).Sometimes the term refers to the
differential equations that the system satisfies
(e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange
equations), and sometimes to the solutions to
those equations.
 The second law states that the net
force on a particle is equal to the
time rate of change of its linear
momentum p in an inertial reference
frame:
where, since the law is valid only for constant-mass
systems, the mass can be taken outside the
differentiation operator by the constant factor rule in
differentiation.
 Motion in uniform E and B
• The magnetic field is always in the y direction, However,
you can enter Ex, Ey, Ez to add electric field to the
system.
The force for charge particle in the electric and magnetic
field is
If the initial velocity is proportional to the magnetic field
and there is no electric field presented, then the force is
always perpendicular to the velocity and magnetic field,
which means that it is a circular motion , so , or which is
a independent on the velocity of the particle. it only
depends on and magnetic field B.