STABILITY OF A UNIFORM PLASMA COMPOSED OF STREAMS IN THE ABSENCE OF AN EXTERNAL FIELD.

Abstract

By means of the collisionless Boltzmann equation and the Maxwell equations with no external field, it is shown that a plasma composed of streams is necessarily unstable for a transverse oscillation propagating perpendicularly to the streams. The instability is attributed to the bunching of the electric current density, corresponding to the bunching of the charge density in the usual two-stream instability which is accompanied by the excitation of a longitudinal oscillation. When the thermal motion of the particles in a stream is taken into account, the instability can be suppressed due to the thermal diffusion of the bunched current. For a transverse oscillation, a criterion of the stability is obtained. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1966
Accession Number
AD0632782

Entities

People

  • Hiromu Momota

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boltzmann Equation
  • Charge Density
  • Current Density
  • Diffusion
  • Electric Current
  • Equations
  • Excitation
  • Instability
  • Oscillation
  • Particles
  • Thermal Diffusion
  • Transverse

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics