Coherent structures such as solitons and vortices are typical features of self-organized physical systems, such as plasmas interacting with superintense laser pulses where coherent structures are of electromagnetic nature. An experiment based on the “proton probing” technique with picosecond temporal resolution, supported by large scale numerical simulations, has given evidence of a new type of organized patterns of structures having features typical of both electromagnetic “solitons” or “cavitons” and magnetostatic vortices. The research team include two scientists from the Pisa research unit “A.Gozzini” of INO: Carlo A. Cecchetti, who contributed to the experimental part, and Andrea Macchi, who contributed to the theoretical interpretation and the numerical simulations: see also Macchi et al, Plasma Phys. Contr. Fus. 49, B71-B78 (2007).
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