Surface Plasma Wave Solitons

It is shown that nonlinear electron plasma surface waves are modulationally unstable and can propagate as solitons on a cold electron plasma-vacuum interface.     

Electron temperature gradient scale at collisionless shocks

Shock waves are ubiquitous in space and astrophysics. They transform directed flow energy into thermal energy and accelerate energetic particles. The energy repartition is a multiscale process related to the spatial and temporal structure of the electromagnetic fields within the shock layer. While large scale features of ion heating are known, the electron heating and smaller scale fields remain poorly understood. We determine for the first time the scale of the electron temperature gradient via electron distributions measured in situ by the Cluster spacecraft. Half of the electron heating coincides with a narrow layer several electron inertial lengths (c/ω(pe)) thick. Consequently, the nonlinear steepening is limited by wave dispersion. The dc electric field must also vary over these small scales, strongly influencing the efficiency of shocks as cosmic ray accelerators.     

On Nonlinear Resonant Absorption of Surface Waves

We consider the resonant absorption of surface waves in a cold electron plasma by taking into account the nonlinear change in the electron density profile which is caused by the wave pressure in the transition layer. Equations, which describe the time evolution of the amplitudes of the electric fields of the surface waves, are obtained and solved. It is shown that the time-behaviour of the surface waves can be significantly different from that obtained from linear theory, and nonlinear effects can thus change the rate of absorption of the surface wave energy and can also stabilize linear surface wave instabilities.     

射频激励等离子体非线性效应的FDTD数值模拟

在考虑热运动、电子复合、扩散等效应后，建立电磁波与等离子体相互作用模型，验证了射频激励等离子体时产生的二次、多次谐波以及各个不同频段信号的调制现象，得到了不同激励功率、产生电子的电场阈值、电子能量等参数对电磁波频谱的影响，这对于射频激励等离子体的电路匹配、耦合器件以及等离子体天线传输、电磁兼容等设计很有帮助. 关键词： 射频 谐波 等离子体 非线性     

Nonlinear dynamical modelling of chaotic electrostatic ion cyclotron oscillations by jerk equations

Plasma being a nonlinear and complex system, is capable of sustaining a wide spectrum of waves, oscillations and instabilities. These fluctuations interact nonlinearly amongst themselves and also with particles: electrons/ions and thus lead to nonlinear wave-wave or wave-particle interaction. In the presence of coherent waves the particles are accelerated whereas irregular oscillations can give rise to particle heating which is also called stochastic heating. Particle orbits are known to be randomized by the wave fields such that their motion can also become stochastic. For fusion to be sustained one needs a very high temperature plasma for an extended duration. It quite common to deploy external waves like electron cyclotron waves or ion cyclotron waves for plasma heating and current drive. These external waves also work only in certain regimes. Conventional plasma techniques have been able to answer several of the observations of the above processes related to heating transport etc, but nonlinear dynamics as a tool has helped in comprehending the plasma oscillations better. We have for the first time obtained a Third Order nonlinear ordinary differential equation (TONLODE) also known as jerk equation to describe the electrostatic ion cyclotron plasma oscillations in a magnetic field. The interesting feature of this equation is that it does not require an external forcing term to obtain chaotic behaviour.     

Parametric Instability of Surface Waves on the Second Harmonic of Electron Cyclotron Frequency in a Plasma Layer

The parametric instability of surface waves on the second harmonic of electron cyclotron frequency (SWCF) in a plasma filled dielectric wave guide is examined in a kinetic approximation. The studied surface waves are extraordinary polarized modes and propagate across the external steady magnetic field. The amplitude of the electrical pump wave is assumed to be small. Simple expressions for increments of the parametric instability of the SWCF are calculated. The otained results can be used in controlled fusion researches in order to avoid undesirable regimes of plasma periphery heating in that fusion devices which use the resonance electron cyclotron heating method.     

Heating self-interaction mechanism of surface magnetoplasma waves in plasma-like medium bounded by metal

The influence of electron heating in the high-frequency surface magnetoplasma wave(SM) field on dispersion properties of the considered SM is investigated. High frequency SM propagate at the interface between a plasma like medium with a finite electrons pressure and a metal. The nonlinear dispersion relation for the SM is derived and investigated.     

Linear and Nonlinear Magnetic Electron Drift Waves in a Nonuniform Strong Magnetic Field

Linear and nonlinear propagation of magnetic electron drift vortex waves in a nonuniform magnetic field is investigated by means of a generalized adiabatic law which takes into account the effect of strong fields and reduces in the appropriate limits to several well known energy conservation equations in a collisionless plasma. In the linear limit, an instability is shown to exist, whereas in the nonlinear regime, steady-state dipole vortices associated with the electron drift vortex waves may appear. The anomalous electron energy transport associated with the unstable magnetic electron drift vortex waves is investigated by means of a quasilinear theory.     

Laboratory study of nonlinear trapping of magnetized Langmuir waves inside a density depletion

The formation of a small-scale plasma density depletion region extended along the ambient magnetic field and caused by the nonlinear interaction of the upper-hybrid plasma waves with a magnetoplasma has been observed under laboratory conditions modeling the ionospheric heating experiments. Plasma waves are trapped inside the depletion due to their specific dispersion properties. The threshold of the nonlinear wave trapping significantly increases in the vicinity of the harmonics of the electron gyrofrequency.     

The dissipative instability of a relativistic electron beam

The theory of the wall instabilities of surface waves excited by an electron beam is developed. Their classification, linear, quasilinear and nonlinear theory is given. It is shown that dissipative instabilities convert practically all the energy lost by the beam into the heating of the lossy walls confining the beam.     

Spatial soliton optical switches: a soliton-based equivalent particle approach

The spatial soliton plays a fundamental role as a robust, particle-like object which can be manipulated to switch or spatially scan collimated light channels or optical pulses which are incident at an oblique angle to an interface separating two or more selffocusing Kerr slab dielectrics. The underlying equivalent particle/multiparticle theory can also be employed to predict stability properties of nonlinear surface or guided waves, to derive an analytic expression for the nonlinear Goos-Hanchen shift at a nonlinear interface and to quantify the effect of material diffusion, linear and twophoton absorption on the switching behaviour of the light beam. Pulsed spatial switching effects are studied in order to illustrate the general predictive power of the equivalent particle theory.     

Post-solitons and electron vortices generated by femtosecond intense laser interacting with uniform near-critical-density plasmas

Generation of nonlinear structures, such as stimulated Raman side scattering waves, post-solitons and electron vortices, during ultra-short intense laser pulse transportation in near-critical-density (NCD) plasmas is studied by using multi-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. In two-dimensional geometries, both P- and S-polarized laser pulses are used to drive these nonlinear structures and to check the polarization effects on them. In the S-polarized case, the scattered waves can be captured by surrounding plasmas leading to the generation of post-solitons, while the main pulse excites convective electric currents leading to the formation of electron vortices through Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI). In the P-polarized case, the scattered waves dissipate their energy by heating surrounding plasmas. Electron vortices are excited due to the hosing instability of the drive laser. These polarization dependent physical processes are reproduced in two different planes perpendicular to the laser propagation direction in three-dimensional simulation with linearly polarized laser driver. The current work provides inspiration for future experiments of laser-NCD plasma interactions.     

Nonlinear waves in a plasma cylinder

Nonlinear electron plasma waves in a cold plasma bounded by a cylindrical dielectric are investigated using the exact electron fluid equations. After the spatial wave structure is determined, a set of nonlinear equations governing the temporal behavior of the field quantities is solved. It is shown that finite amplitude waves and explosively unstable behavior can occur     

Spatial dispersion in metamaterials with negative dielectric permittivity and its effect on surface waves

The effect of spatial dispersion on the electromagnetic properties of a metamaterial consisting of a three-dimensional mesh of crossing metallic wires is reported. The effective dielectric permittivity tensor epsilon(ij)(omega, k) of the wire mesh is calculated in the limit of small wavenumbers. The procedure for extracting the spatial dispersion from the omega versus k dependence for electromagnetic waves propagating in the bulk of the metamaterial is developed. These propagating modes are identified as similar to the longitudinal (plasmon) and transverse (photon) waves in a plasma. Spatial dispersion is found to have the most dramatic effect on the surface waves that exist at the wire mesh-vacuum interface.     

Optical phase conjugation and related experiments with surface plasma waves

We report on the experimental observation of optical phase conjugation using surface plasma waves in two different configurations: one involving four surface plasma waves and the other one involving two surface pump waves and bulk probe and conjugate waves. The major nonlinear contribution comes from heating of the metal film. In a related experiment, we have also observed the coupling of a bulk probe wave to the corresponding surface wave through the grating created by two counter-propagating surface plasma waves. In this case, we could observe the creation of surface acoustical waves.     

Complex ray tracing study of electron cyclotron resonance heating

In the up-to-date ray tracing study of electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) of fusion plasmas, energy absorption effect has never been considered into the wave trajectory computation. Thus all the work has been done in real space so far. In this paper we consider coupling of energy absorption to wave trajectory for the first time, and numerically solve the formal complex Hamilton equations in complex space, then take the real-space-projected wave trajectories and group velocities to be the corresponding concrete ones. It is shown that both ordinary wave and extraordinary wave injected from the inner side of the tokamak plasmas approach the electron cyclotron resonance surface step by step and their group velocities become exceedingly small as they move toward this surface. Those clearly show that the resonance between the electron cyclotron waves and the fusion plasmas takes place in the electron cyclotron resonance region, which is just the case the ECRH experimental results and the plasma kinetic theory of waves demonstrate.     

Kinetic theory of surface waves in a semibounded plasma flow

A study is made of the spectrum of surface waves in a semibounded plasma flow. The frequency spectra and damping rates of the waves propagating along the flow are analyzed both in the high-frequency range (in which the spatial dispersion is weak and the wave damping is governed primarily by electron collisions) and the low-frequency range (in which the spatial-dispersion effects dominate), with focus on the effect of the flow velocity on the propagation of ion-acoustic waves. Special attention is paid to the penetration of a static field into a plasma flowing at a supersonic velocity.     

Stability of surface waves at magnetized plasma – metal interface

The stability of high‐frequency potential surface waves at a dense magnetized plasma – metal interface with respect to a low‐frequency plasma density modulation is studied in the point of view of the surface waves control. The discussion is addressed to the situation, when an external steady magnetic field is directed perpendicularly to the interface. The nonlinear interaction process of the high‐frequency surface wave, its satellites and the low‐frequency plasma density perturbation is investigated. It is shown that the low‐frequency plasma density perturbation can be represented as a superposition of forced waves of surface and volume types and can lead to an additional attenuation of the surface waves. This attenuation arises when the surface wave amplitude exceeds the threshold value. (© 2003 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Trinal Nature of the Excitation of Bulk Plasmons by a Fast Charged Particle at Grazing Incidence on the Interface between Vacuum and a Metal with Strong Spatial Dispersion

The excitation and propagation of bulk and surface (surface waves of transition radiation of plasmons at frequencies above the plasma frequency) plasma waves by incident electrons moving both in vacuum toward the surface of a metal and inside the metal whose boundary elastically and spectacularly reflects internal nonequilibrium electrons have been analyzed. In contrast to work [B. N. Libenson, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 113, 553 (2011)], attention in this work is focused on the influence of surface effects on bulk-plasmon excitation by incident electrons. The probabilities and spectra of single characteristic energy loss of an intermediate- energy electron (50–500 eV) moving at an angle to the surface of the medium in three regions: in vacuum, in the medium, and again in vacuum after the electron leaves the medium are calculated. The kinetic approximation is used for the dielectric function, where the entire range of the plasmon spectrum is taken into account correctly for the problem under consideration. In the indicated energy range of incident electrons, surface effects, on the one hand, significantly reduces the probability of excitation of bulk plasma waves in the medium with strong spatial dispersion, in particular, as compared to the results obtained in [B.N. Libenson, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 113, 553 (2011)], where surface effects were disregarded and the probability of bulkplasmon excitation by a 200-eV electron incident and emitted perpendicularly to the boundary is about one third of that in the unbounded medium. On the other hand, at grazing incidence from vacuum, the probability of transition radiation of bulk plasmons increases significantly and can lead to a change in the character of the angular dependence of the intensity of bulk plasma energy loss. Thus, the main result of this work is that a decrease in the glancing angle of the fast electron with respect to the vacuum–metal interface is accompanied both by an increase in the contribution from the transition mechanism to the probability of bulk-plasmon excitation in the vacuum region and by a decrease in the contribution from Cherenkov and bremsstrahlung mechanisms of excitation in the medium. The probability of bulk-plasmon excitation in the vacuum region exceeds the probability of excitation at the further motion of the electron in metallic aluminum at angles of incidence larger than 65°, 70°, and 75° at the energies E = 200, 350, and 500 eV, respectively.     

[Russian Text Ignored]

The plasmon turbulence parametrically excited by two strong external waves with a frequency difference close to twice the electron plasma frequency is investigated in underdense plasmas. The nonlinear stabilization of the growing plasmons due to scattering by ions is described by a nonlinear integro-differential equation for the spectral plasmon energy density. The dependence of the turbulent relaxation of the plasmon energy and its stationary level on the parameters of the plasma and the pump waves is given by analytical and numerical solutions of this equation.