@article{169d3dcb613043e599eb11ca1becda51,
title = "Observation of magnetic field generation via the Weibel instability in interpenetrating plasma flows",
abstract = "Collisionless shocks can be produced as a result of strong magnetic fields in a plasma flow, and therefore are common in many astrophysical systems. The Weibel instability is one candidate mechanism for the generation of sufficiently strong fields to create a collisionless shock. Despite their crucial role in astrophysical systems, observation of the magnetic fields produced by Weibel instabilities in experiments has been challenging. Using a proton probe to directly image electromagnetic fields, we present evidence of Weibel-generated magnetic fields that grow in opposing, initially unmagnetized plasma flows from laser-driven laboratory experiments. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations reveal that the instability efficiently extracts energy from the plasma flows, and that the self-generated magnetic energy reaches a few percent of the total energy in the system. This result demonstrates an experimental platform suitable for the investigation of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, including collisionless shock formation in supernova remnants, large-scale magnetic field amplification, and the radiation signature from gamma-ray bursts.",
author = "Huntington, {C. M.} and F. Fiuza and Ross, {J. S.} and Zylstra, {A. B.} and Drake, {R. P.} and Froula, {D. H.} and G. Gregori and Kugland, {N. L.} and Kuranz, {C. C.} and Levy, {M. C.} and Li, {C. K.} and J. Meinecke and T. Morita and R. Petrasso and C. Plechaty and Remington, {B. A.} and Ryutov, {D. D.} and Y. Sakawa and Anatoly Spitkovsky and H. Takabe and Park, {H. S.}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank the staff of the Omega Laser Facility for their experimental support. This work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344, with funding support from LLNL LDRD grant No. 11-ERD-054 and from the European Research Council under the European Community{\textquoteright}s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), ERC grant agreement no. 256973. Computing support for this work came from ALCC and INCITE awards on Mira (ALCF supported under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357) and from the LLNL Institutional Computing Grand Challenge program on Vulcan. Additionally, the authors would like to acknowledge the OSIRIS Consortium, consisting of UCLA and IST (Lisbon, Portugal) for the use of the OSIRIS 2.0 framework and the visXD framework. F.F. acknowledges the LLNL Lawrence Fellowship for financial support. A.S. is supported by DOE grant DE-NA0002200. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited.",
year = "2015",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1038/nphys3178",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "11",
pages = "173--176",
journal = "Nature Physics",
issn = "1745-2473",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "2",
}