Browse Physics

A proposed explanation for puzzling features on the Moon involving small-scale magnetic fields has now been verified with a scaled-down version in the lab.

Complex structures appear spontaneously in a plasma in a strong magnetic field. The work explores a new regime of plasma behavior that could be relevant for industry and demonstrates a new technique for imaging plasma dynamics.

Producing terahertz-frequency radiation with a hair-thin, laser-produced plasma could allow for remote illumination and imaging.

Researchers directly measured the time-varying field during a spark-like electrical breakdown that formed a plasma.

A new theory may explain what triggers solar flares, explosions of solar energy that can affect earthly communications.

A simple arrangement of electric and magnetic fields causes plasma to form shapes reminiscent of the jets generated near supermassive black holes.

Cleverly arranged electromagnetic fields could form a ‘one-way door’ that allows electrons through on one side but repels them from the other.

Bombarding aluminum with protons provides a glimpse of warm dense plasma, a rarely observed form of matter.

The mystery of the sun’s blazing corona may be partially solved by a theory describing how magnetic events lead to heating at the corona’s base.

A plasma lens focuses a high energy beam of positrons.

An ultracold plasma can form spontaneously from a cloud of cold, excited atoms.

Physicists have used an artificial aurora to illuminate a layer of the ionosphere that has been difficult to observe.

Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make high frequency coherent light. A similar process could lead to a compact source of coherent x rays.

Physicists have successfully tested a technique for driving current in fusion-based electric power plants of the future.

The reactions that lead to nuclear power or an atomic blast can now be initiated with laser light, allowing researchers to run new types of nuclear physics experiments.