UCLA

We report an unanticipated electron dynamics in a classical setting of a uniform magnetic field, a parallel electric field and a right-handed circularly polarised wave (R-wave). The setting admits a natural trajectory that a particle accelerated by the electric field reaches a Doppler–shifted cyclotron resonance and becomes trapped in the resonance space. Remarkably, once it becomes resonantly trapped, the electron undergoes reversal of parallel acceleration together with perpendicular energisation, despite the parallel electric field remaining constant. This counterintuitive behaviour has important implications for particle scattering in various laboratory and space plasmas. Applied to fusion devices, particle-in-cell simulations show that an externally injected R-wave can act as a firewall suppressing further runaway-electron acceleration.