In the aftermath of the latest bout of extreme rainfall across New Zealand's upper North Island, there were some familiar scenes.
Author(s): Iu. Gagarin and Ph. Korneev
The process of direct laser acceleration of plasma electrons is considered in a strongly magnetized plasmoid with the magnetic field strength allowing for reaching the autoresonance without any special injection conditions. The plasmoid may be optically created by irradiation of specially designed t…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045204] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026
Author(s): Julien Langlois and Renaud Gueroult
The trajectory of light rays propagating through a nonuniformly moving anisotropic medium is determined by considering the Fresnel drag experienced by the wave at each point along the ray. By showing that symmetries in the velocity field manifest as symmetries in the effective wave index representin…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045205] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026
Author(s): Daniel Plummer, Pontus Svensson, Wiktor Jasniak, Patrick Hollebon, Sam M. Vinko, and Gianluca Gregori
We develop a wavepacket molecular dynamics framework for modeling the structural properties of partially ionized dense plasmas, based on a chemical model that explicitly includes bound state wave functions. Using hydrogen as a representative system, we compute self-consistent charge state distributi…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045206] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026
Author(s): Laury Batista, Samuel Marini, Nicolas Chauvin, Antoine Chancé, Didier Uriot, and Phu Anh Phi Nghiem
Beyond beam energy and energy spread, transverse beam parameters are crucial in laser-plasma accelerator projects that aim to deliver a high-quality beam to a user's community. In this article, transverse beam physics is thoroughly studied throughout an entire plasma stage, including a plasma densit…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045207] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026
SummarySatellite altimetry technology can recover the marine gravity field by measuring Sea Surface Heights (SSHs) with high precision. However, traditional methods, relying on linearized SSH–gravity relations, fail to capture complex nonlinear characteristics. Meanwhile, the accuracy of the altimeter-only gravity field is often compromised in shallow depth areas due to poor-quality altimetric signals. To address these issues, this study proposes a method for recovering gravity anomalies that combines Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) with multi-source data. The BPNN establishes a nonlinear relationship between gravity and input parameters, including Deflections of the Vertical (DOVs), Seafloor Topography (ST), Vertical Gravity Gradients (VGGs), and Gravity Anomalies (GAs), thereby constructing a gravity anomaly model for the South China Sea. For benchmarking, gravity is also derived with the classical Inverse Vening–Meinesz (IVM) method and validated against independent shipborne gravity which is applied to evaluate the performance of the gravity model. The results demonstrate that the BPNN method outperforms the IVM method, achieving an accuracy improvement of 1.08 mGal overall, and 1.61 mGal in shallow depth areas. Additionally, compared with the reference gravity models (SWOT and DTU17), the gravity model derived by the BPNN method achieves an accuracy improvement of 0.04 mGal and 0.85 mGal, respectively. Power spectra analysis further reveals that the improvements from the BPNN method are most significant in the wavelength range of 5-100 km. The improved accuracy is attributed to the effective incorporation of ST, VGG and prior GA information. The results show that the BPNN method effectively captures nonlinear features and has significant potential for marine gravity field recovery.
A growing network of meltwater lakes at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating the flow of major glaciers, potentially increasing the pace of global sea-level rise. Warmer air and sea temperatures have led to the loss of around 264 gigatons of ice every year in Greenland since 2002, causing sea levels to rise by 0.8 millimeters annually. But a new study by the University of Leeds examining glacier behavior across the entire ice sheet has highlighted a lesser-known feature that is amplifying this mass loss—the freshwater lakes forming as the ice retreats.
Rivers are rarely the calm, orderly streams we imagine on maps. Over time, their winding paths—called meanders—shift, bend, and occasionally snap off in sudden "cutoff" events that shorten loops and reshape the landscape. While scientists have long suspected that such cutoffs inject a dose of unpredictability into river evolution, a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment demonstrates that these abrupt events are, by themselves, enough to produce chaos in river channels.
Earth's "gold kitchen" lies deep beneath the seafloor. Island arcs, whose volcanoes form above subduction zones where one oceanic plate sinks beneath another, are often particularly rich in gold. The reasons for this have long been debated.
Researchers have uncovered new evidence that short-lived spikes in ocean phosphorus may have played a major role in two of the most severe marine extinctions in Earth's history. Dr. Matthew Dodd from The University of Western Australia's School of Earth and Oceans is lead author of the study published in Nature Communications, which sheds new light on how nutrient disruption can destabilize life, climate, and ocean chemistry on a global scale.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, caused widespread population displacement and infrastructure damage. However, it has also led to an unintended environmental effect with notable changes in the country's landscape, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters. Among the concerns are the complex impacts of wars on water resources. These repercussions can be direct, such as wastewater pollution and destruction of water infrastructure, or indirect, including increased deforestation, soil erosion, and abrupt cropland losses.
In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of researchers led by geoscientist Michael Rawlins at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has shown in fine-grained detail what happens when Arctic permafrost thaws. Focusing on a Wisconsin-sized area of Alaska's North Slope containing hundreds of rivers and streams flowing into the Beaufort Sea, the team analyzed 44 years of model data at one-kilometer grid resolution, revealing how massively runoff is increasing, the increased loads of previously frozen carbon flowing through northern Alaska's rivers and how the thawing season has extended into late-summer and fall.
Author(s): Jiheon Song, Jeff Candy, Emily Belli, and Jungpyo Lee
The role of zonal flow (ZF) in the turbulence saturation of trapped electron modes (TEM) in magnetically confined plasmas is revisited. In this study, we examine ZF excitation and saturation mechanisms in TEM turbulence using detailed free-energy transfer diagnostics from nonlinear gyrokinetic simul…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045201] Published Wed Apr 01, 2026
Author(s): Xufei Xie et al.
Detailed investigation of the x-ray drive on the capsule at the center of the hohlraum is crucial to solve the “drive deficit” problem in inertial confinement fusion. A pioneering work for probing the drive flux at the hohlraum center by simultaneously measuring the re-emitted flux and shock velocit…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045202] Published Wed Apr 01, 2026
Author(s): Cunbo Zhang, Zongqiang Ma, Yang Song, Cheng-quan Fu, Zhengfeng Fan, Anmin He, and Pei Wang
Within the equilibrium-diffusion approximation for radiation, we perform a linear stability analysis of the compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a stratified, isothermal background. Radiation alters the growth rate by modulating the fluid's effective compressibility. Radiative diffusion enhan…
[Phys. Rev. E 113, 045203] Published Wed Apr 01, 2026
SummaryGlaciers are key components of the global climate system and sensitive indicators of environmental change. Their dynamics generate diverse seismic signals, whose source mechanisms offer valuable insights into their internal stress conditions. While moment tensor inversion has been applied to icequakes on a few alpine and polar glaciers, it had not yet been implemented on the Argentière Glacier (French Alps). In this study, we conduct a systematic characterization of icequake source mechanisms based on a dense dataset of 14 057 near-surface events recorded by 98 3-component sensors deployed at the surface of the glacier during the RESOLVE project. We apply a full waveform inversion method to jointly reconstruct the moment tensor and the source time wavelet for each event. The moment tensor Green’s functions used in the inversion are computed through numerical modeling of elastic wave propagation in a 3D medium, incorporating real surface topography. This approach allows us to exploit the full complexity of the recorded seismic signals and to move beyond previous analysis based on simplified models and single-component data. The results reveal a clear dominance of opening-type (tensile crack) mechanisms, consistent with extensional stress regimes at the crevasse locations, with principal stress direction almost perpendicular to the local crevasse orientations. The exceptional size of the catalog enables a detailed investigation of spatial patterns in source mechanisms, particularly highlighting structural complexity in the heavily crevassed downstream zone. The distribution of extensional and compressional mechanisms further indicates a highly heterogeneous stress field at the glacier surface, influenced by local crevasse geometry. Depth-dependent variations in the reconstructed moment tensors suggest that deeper events tend to involve more isotropic components, likely reflecting pressure-driven failure under overburden stress. These findings demonstrate the potential of full waveform inversion to characterize the source mechanisms associated with the icequakes on a glacier. This work represents a significant step toward integrating seismological modeling with glaciological interpretation in alpine environments.
Communities worldwide rely on reservoirs for drinking water, hydroelectric power, irrigation, and more. These critical freshwater resources are affected by seasonal and long-term changes; water levels in reservoirs can dip during hot summer months or due to prolonged drought, or can flood after a particularly strong storm. Despite their importance, there are key gaps in our knowledge of reservoir structure and dynamics. Two recent papers published in Scientific Data use Landsat data to help fill in those gaps.
The circular economy concept is often thought of as a model to eliminate waste and pollution—but when applied thoughtfully, circular approaches can create jobs, strengthen local economies, improve public health and more, according to new research led by Charles Darwin University (CDU).
As global temperatures climb, rainfall patterns are shifting in ways that could put water resources and agriculture under increasing strain, a new study published in Water Resources Research suggests.
Scientific expeditions require months of planning before scientists can acquire the first data. A bark cuts through the Arctic silence, waking Anna up. She slept only three hours after collecting the last sample. Anna reaches for her rifle, exits the tent, and steps onto the midnight ice. She pets the guard dog she rented a few days earlier. It might be a false alarm, but she scans the darkness for polar bears, hoping her training pays off. She cannot afford to lose the samples. Nor her life.
