Runaway electrons and Bremsstrahlung

摘要

If an electric field is applied to a plasma, it causes 'runaway' acceleration of some electrons—a phenomenon that has been known for almost a century. A paper by Embréus et al (2016 New J. Phys. 18 093023) calculates how the emission of Bremsstrahlung affects the upper end of the energy spectrum of these electrons, and finds that it is important to carefully account for finite energy of the emitted photons.