Ponderomotive Effects in Nonneutral Plasmas,
Abstract
Nonlinear wave effects in plasmas fall into two broad categories: wave-particle interactions and fluid nonlinearities. For waves whose phase velocities are much larger than the average thermal velocities of all particle species, the wave-particle interaction plays an insignificant role. In such systems the fluid nonlinearities are primarily responsible for the modification of the zero order plasma equilibrium as the wave amplitude is increased beyond the linear regime. The subject of this paper falls into the latter class. Among the numerous fluid nonlinearities associated with a large amplitude, high frequency, electrostatic wave, there are two effects of overwhelming importance: parametric instabilities and ponderomotive force density modifications. In conventional neutral plasmas both of these can appear simultaneously and lead to interesting physical effects which have been extensively investigated theoretically and experimentally. However, in single species plasmas, i.e., nonneutral plasmas, the parametric instability channel is not readily available because there is only a single mass present. Consequently, in these systems it is expected that the first nonlinear effect to appear is modification of the zero order density by the ponderomotive force. This is the specific issue that is considered in this work.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1983
- Accession Number
- ADA132109
Entities
People
- B. M. Lamb
- George J. Morales
Organizations
- University of California, Los Angeles