Physical world and mathematics

Plasma lens

A plasma lens is a beam-optics device that focuses charged-particle beams using fields in a plasma; active types drive currents through gas-filled capillaries, reaching kilotesla-per-meter gradients.

Plasma medicine is the direct application of physical plasma on or in the human body for therapy, using cold atmospheric plasmas to kill drug-resistant microbes, promote wound healing, and destroy cancer cells.

Plasma mirror

A plasma mirror is a reflective layer of plasma formed when an intense laser ionizes a target surface, used to clean pulse contrast and generate attosecond light.

Plasma modeling

Plasma modeling is the use of numerical simulation to predict the behavior of ionized gases, from fusion reactor cores and laser-plasma experiments to planetary magnetospheres, through fluid, fully kinetic, and hybrid methods.

Plasma plume

A plasma plume is the luminous cloud of electrons, atoms, and ions ejected from a solid target by pulsed laser ablation, used in thin-film deposition and LIBS.

Plasma polymerization

Plasma polymerization is a dry thin-film deposition method in which a glow discharge fragments vaporized monomers into highly crosslinked polymer films used for barrier coatings and biocompatible surfaces.

Plasma reflectometry

Plasma reflectometry is a radar-like diagnostic that launches microwaves into a plasma and measures the wave reflected from the cutoff layer to determine electron density, its fluctuations, and turbulence, used routinely in fusion reactors.

Plasma rotation effects on turbulence and stability

Plasma rotation effects on turbulence and stability cover how sheared flow suppresses turbulent heat loss and how toroidal rotation stabilizes the resistive wall mode in tokamaks.

Plasma sheet

The plasma sheet is a near-equatorial layer of relatively dense plasma in the tail of Earth's magnetosphere, typically 2 to 6 Earth radii thick and a source of auroral particles.

Plasma torch

A plasma torch is a device that generates a controlled jet of thermal plasma by passing gas through an electric arc, used for cutting, spraying, and melting metals.

Plasma turbulence

Plasma turbulence is chaotic fluctuation in ionized gases, distinguished from fluid turbulence by nonlinearity, nonlocality, and anisotropy, and studied in the solar wind and fusion devices.

Plasma wall conditioning

Plasma wall conditioning treats the surfaces inside a fusion device's vacuum vessel to control impurities and hydrogen recycling, using techniques like baking, glow discharge cleaning, and boronization.

Plasma X-ray laser

A plasma X-ray laser uses ionized gas or solid-density plasma as its gain medium, emitting coherent extreme ultraviolet and X-ray radiation in a single pass.

Plasma-assisted CO2 conversion

Plasma-assisted CO2 conversion uses non-thermal plasma, whose hot electrons activate CO2 near ambient temperature, splitting it into CO and O2 or reforming it with methane into syngas.

Plasma-assisted desorption ionization

Plasma-assisted desorption ionization (PADI) is an ambient mass spectrometry method in which a low-temperature radio-frequency plasma desorbs and ionizes molecules directly from surfaces, requiring no sample preparation.

Plasma-catalytic CO2 conversion

Plasma-catalytic CO2 conversion is a chemical technology combining non-thermal plasma with a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, methane, methanol, and other value-added chemicals.

Plasma-facing material

Plasma-facing material, also known as plasma-facing components (PFM), is the armor lining a fusion device's first wall, limiters, and divertor targets, governing tritium retention and component lifetime.

Plasmapause

The plasmapause is the outer boundary of Earth's plasmasphere, the sharp edge where cold plasma density drops steeply, typically 2 to 6 Earth radii out, discovered in the early 1960s and key to radiation belt physics.

Plasmaron

A plasmaron is a composite quasiparticle, an electron or hole bound to a plasmon, predicted by Lars Hedin in 1967 and first seen in doped graphene in 2010.

Plasmolysis

Plasmolysis is the separation of a plant cell's protoplast from its cell wall, caused by water loss in a hypertonic solution; it is generally reversible.

Plasmon

A plasmon is a quantum of collective plasma oscillation of free electrons in a solid, the basis of plasmonics, which concentrates optical energy below the wavelength of light.

Plasmon resonance energy transfer

Plasmon resonance energy transfer (PRET) is a single-particle spectroscopy technique in which a plasmonic nanoparticle transfers energy to a nearby molecule, quenching its scattering spectrum.

Plasmon-induced hot-carrier chemistry

Plasmon-induced hot-carrier chemistry, also called plasmonic catalysis, uses energetic electrons and holes from plasmon decay in metal nanoparticles to drive redox reactions with visible light.

Plasmon-induced transparency

Plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) is a classical optical effect mimicking electromagnetically induced transparency, where bright and dark plasmon modes interfere to open a narrow transmission window inside a broad absorption band.

Plasmon–phonon hybridization in graphene on hBN

Plasmon–phonon hybridization in graphene on hBN is the coupling between graphene's tunable plasmon-polaritons and hexagonal boron nitride's low-loss phonon polaritons, forming hybrid mid-infrared modes, first reported in 2014.

Plasmonic bound states in the continuum

Plasmonic bound states in the continuum are localized, non-radiating optical resonances in metal-dielectric nanostructures that enable sharp resonances for lasing, sensing, and nonlinear frequency conversion.

Plasmonic catalysis

Plasmonic catalysis is a light-driven catalysis method in which plasmonically excited metal nanoparticles, usually gold, silver, copper, or aluminum, break and form chemical bonds on their surfaces.

Plasmonic electrochromism

Plasmonic electrochromism is a form of electrochromism in which an applied electrical potential reversibly changes the localized surface plasmon resonance, and so the color, of nanomaterials.

Plasmonic electron acceleration

Plasmonic electron acceleration is a proposed accelerator method using enhanced plasmon fields in metallic nanostructures driven by lasers or beams, targeting gradients beyond conventional RF cavities.