2025/10/22 by H. McCright, McCright, H., Ian Abel +10 · 2 voices
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Accelerator Physics (physics.acc-ph) #Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aerodynamics #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Pattern Formation and Solitons (nlin.PS) #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) #nlin.PS #physics.acc-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.19786
openalex publication_date 2025/10/22 · arxiv published 2025/10/22 · arxiv updated 2025/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Dispersive shock waves (DSWs) are expanding nonlinear wave trains that arise when dispersion regularizes a steepening front, a phenomenon observed in fluids, plasmas, optics, and superfluids. Here we report the first experimental observation of DSWs in an intense electron beam, using the University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER). A localized induction-cell perturbation produced a negative density pulse that evolved into a leading soliton-like peak followed by an expanding train of oscillations. The leading peak satisfied soliton scaling laws for width2 vs inverse amplitude and velocity vs amplitude, while the total wave-train width increased linearly with time, consistent with Korteweg--de Vries (KdV) predictions. Successive peaks showed decreasing amplitude and velocity toward the trailing edge, in agreement with dispersive shock ordering. These results demonstrate that intense charged particle beams provide a new laboratory platform for studying dispersive hydrodynamics, extending nonlinear wave physics into the high-intensity beam regime.