Congratulations to the team of Yakov Krasik for publishing 2 papers this month in the Journal “Physics of Plasmas". The first paper, “Generation of supersonic jets from underwater electrical explosions of wire arrays”, by Daniel Maler, Sergey Efimov , Alexander Rososhek, Simon N. Bland, and Yakov KrasiK, was published on June 9th and selected both as a Featured paper in Physics of Plasmas and was also featured in AIP’s Scilight (Science Highlight journal) on June 11th (read the interesting Scilight article here).

The second paper by Krasik’s team was published on June 15th (Vol.28, Issue 6) by Yang Cao, John Leopold, Yuri Bliokh, Guy Leibovitch and Yakov Krasik, titled “Nonlinear absorption of high-power microwave pulses in a plasma filled waveguide”. The team obtained a new phenomenon - complete absorption of ~1.2 GW, 0.5 ns, 25.6 GHz high power microwave (HPM) pulse in a plasma-filled waveguide. Part of the plasma electrons are ejected towards the waveguide walls by high gradients of electric field of high-power Microwave (HPM) pulse, leaving in the waveguide an un-compensated ion charge. The latter forms a potential well where the remaining electrons oscillate in the pulse field. Due to decreased group velocity of the wave, these trapped electrons have sufficient time to collide with ions while their regular oscillatory motion becomes chaotic. Thus, all the energy of the HPM pulse is transferred to the kinetic energy of these electrons.

Yang Cao, the first author of the paper, began his master’s degree in our department under the supervision of Yakov Krasik in 2016 and is currently doing his Ph.D. with Yakov. He studied his Bachelor's degree at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. “The reason why I came to Israel is because of a trip in 2013 in which we were invited to attend a one-month Ulpan course in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Prof. Ben-Sasson who was visiting China”, shares Yang. “During that month, I studied Hebrew, and also got to know a little bit about Israel”. Before his trip ended, he came to Haifa and visited the Technion which left a good impression on him and lead him to apply to our department. “In my opinion, plasma physics is a fascinating field with a lot of possibilities to connect the future with reality”, adds Yang.

Congratulations to the Plasma team!