Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies
I currently work at the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies (CCLDAS) in Boulder, Colorado. The mission of CCLDAS is to better understand the environment of the Moon and other airless bodies through a combination of experiment, theory, and computer simulation.
Below: Celebrating the very first dust particle to go through our accelerator. Left to right, grad student Anthony Shu, professional researcher Keith Drake, and me.
Large Plasma Device
Before starting at CCLDAS in July of 2010, I was in grad school at UCLA. I worked under Walter Gekelman on the Large Plasma Device (LaPD) experiment at the Basic Plasma Science Facility.
The LaPD is a world-class basic plasma research device, supporting a quiet 60cm x 16 meter strongly magnetized discharge plasma. My thesis is on the behavior of a dense, expanding laser-generated plasma within the LaPD background plasma.
Inside LaPD, a carbon (graphite) cylinder (2cm x 20cm) is suspended within the plasma. During the discharge, the inside face is illuminated by the pulse from a 10ns, 1.1J Nd:YAG laser, at an angle near normal to the background field. A dense (initial n ≈ 10^15) plasma forms and propagates across the background field.
Beyond the large-scale dynamics, by far the most interesting aspect of the experiment is the complicated structure observed on the expanding plasma. Two-probe correlation measurements indicate the presence of large electrostatic structures on the plasma surface.
First-author papers & publications
- A. Collette and W. Gekelman. Structure of an Exploding Laser-Produced Plasma. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 195003 (2010).
- A. Collette and W. Gekelman. Two-dimensional micro-step probe drive for laboratory plasma measurement. Rev. Sci. Instr., v79, 083505 (2008)
Talks & presentations
- A. Collette, M. Horanyi, T. Munsat et al. The Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies (poster presentation). 2010 AGU Fall meeting, San Francisco.
- A. Collette. Structure of an Exploding Laser-Produced Plasma (invited talk). 2010 APS DPP Fall Meeting, Chicago.
Other-author papers
- W. Gekelman, E. Lawrence, A. Collette, et al. Magnetic field line reconnection in the current systems of flux ropes and Alfvén waves. Phys. Scr. T142 014032 (2010)
- C. Constantin, W. Gekelman, P. Pribyl et al. Collisionless interaction of an energetic laser produced plasma with a large magnetoplasma. Astrophys. Space. Sci., DOI 10.1007/s10509-009-0012-z (2009)
- W. Gekelman, S. Vincena, A. Collette. Visualizing three-dimensional reconnection in a colliding laser plasma experiment. IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., v36, n4, August, (2008)
- S. Vincena, W. Gekelman, M.A. Van Zeeland et al. Quasielectrostatic whistler wave radiation from the hot electron emission of a laser-produced plasma. Phys. Plasmas, v15 072114 (2008)
- W. Gekelman, A. Collette, S. Vincena. Three-dimensional current systems generated by plasmas colliding in a background magnetoplasma. Phys. Plasmas, 14, 062109 (2007)
The LaPD is a world-class basic plasma research device, supporting a quiet 60cm x 16 meter strongly magnetized discharge plasma. My thesis is on the behavior of a dense, expanding laser-generated plasma within the LaPD background plasma.Inside LaPD, a carbon (graphite) cylinder (2cm x 20cm) is suspended within the plasma. During the discharge, the inside face is illuminated by the pulse from a 10ns, 1.1J Nd:YAG laser, at an angle near normal to the background field. A dense (initial n ≈ 1015) plasma forms and propagates across the background field.
Beyond the large-scale dynamics, by far the most interesting aspect of the experiment is the complicated structure observed on the expanding plasma. Two-probe correlation measurements indicate the presence of large electrostatic structures on the plasma surface.