Plasma localization of charged debris
Abstract
We investigate whether the plasma disturbances generated by a charged debris object can be used to infer its position without directly sampling the object or its immediate sheath. A one-dimensional open-boundary electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) framework is used to model a continuously flowing electron-ion plasma containing an initially uncharged debris object. The debris charges self-consistently and produces an ion-ion counter-streaming instability (IICSI), which is sustained and reaches a statistically stationary state. A matching simulation without debris provides a controlled background against which debris-induced changes in different plasma fields are identified. The precursor and wake are examined through their spatial extent, fluctuation power, and frequency--wavenumber spectra. Weak-form sparse regression is then used as a supporting tool to recover reduced fluid and kinetic residuals and to learn an empirical relation connecting the precursor and wake disturbance envelopes to the equilibrium plasma flow, debris charge, and distance from the source. The predictive capability is examined by successively treating each simulation as an independent case. For each evaluation, the model is constructed from the remaining simulations, while the excluded simulation is used only to infer the debris position from its plasma response. For the idealized cold-ion regime considered here, the procedure successfully localizes the debris in transonic and supersonic flows, whereas the subsonic cases remain unresolved. These results demonstrate that debris-induced plasma disturbances possess a learnable spatial structure and provide a proof-of-principle route toward future remote localization using more realistic multidimensional models; they do not constitute an operational debris-detection scheme.
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BibTeX
@misc{joardar2026plasma,
title = {{Plasma localization of charged debris}},
author = {Bikramjit Joardar and Madhurjya P. Bora},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.23437},
eprint = {2609.23437},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23437},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Plasma localization of charged debris
AU - Bikramjit Joardar
AU - Madhurjya P. Bora
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.23437
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23437
AB - We investigate whether the plasma disturbances generated by a charged debris object can be used to infer its position without directly sampling the object or its immediate sheath. A one-dimensional open-boundary electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) framework is used to model a continuously flowing electron-ion plasma containing an initially uncharged debris object. The debris charges self-consistently and produces an ion-ion counter-streaming instability (IICSI), which is sustained and reaches a statistically stationary state. A matching simulation without debris provides a controlled background against which debris-induced changes in different plasma fields are identified. The precursor and wake are examined through their spatial extent, fluctuation power, and frequency--wavenumber spectra. Weak-form sparse regression is then used as a supporting tool to recover reduced fluid and kinetic residuals and to learn an empirical relation connecting the precursor and wake disturbance envelopes to the equilibrium plasma flow, debris charge, and distance from the source. The predictive capability is examined by successively treating each simulation as an independent case. For each evaluation, the model is constructed from the remaining simulations, while the excluded simulation is used only to infer the debris position from its plasma response. For the idealized cold-ion regime considered here, the procedure successfully localizes the debris in transonic and supersonic flows, whereas the subsonic cases remain unresolved. These results demonstrate that debris-induced plasma disturbances possess a learnable spatial structure and provide a proof-of-principle route toward future remote localization using more realistic multidimensional models; they do not constitute an operational debris-detection scheme.
ER -