Exhibition Gallery

A visualization of the magnetic field strength during the turbulent plasma dynamo, a mechanism that is responsible for the strength of the magnetic field in the intracluster medium. Data is generated as the result of a hybrid-kinetic simulation using the Pegasus code with 27 billion virtual particles on a 2744-core supercomputer for several months. Turbulent particle motions that carry along the magnetic field cause it to stretch, fold, and grow in magnitude, eventually allowing the field to exert its influence on the bulk fluid. This print-out highlights both the large-scale structures that emerge from these bulk motions, as well as the small-scale structures that arise from kinetic instabilities of individual particles. This image was produced using Visit 2.10.2.

Turbulent Plasma Dynamo

Denis St-Onge (graduate student), Matthew Kunz (faculty)

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab

A visualization of the magnetic field strength during the turbulent plasma dynamo, a mechanism that is responsible for the strength of the magnetic field in the intracluster medium. Data is generated as the result of a hybrid-kinetic simulation using the Pegasus code with 27 billion virtual particles on a 2744-core supercomputer for several months. Turbulent particle motions that carry along the magnetic field cause it to stretch, fold, and grow in magnitude, eventually allowing the field to exert its influence on the bulk fluid. This print-out highlights both the large-scale structures that emerge from these bulk motions, as well as the small-scale structures that arise from kinetic instabilities of individual particles. This image was produced using Visit 2.10.2.