Nanolayer parametric instability in near-field optics

Parametric decay of electromagnetic waves into two Langmuir oscillations near the quarter critical density is suggested as being attributable to an enhanced electric field and to surface-enhanced Raman scattering in near-field optics. A nanolayer of silver aggregates localizes the wave in the evanescent region to a one-wavelength span and results in a wave-number mismatch as well as in a reduced growth rate. The fastest-growing mode has a growth rate that scales with the square root of the nanolayer's thickness.     

Decay instability in a plasma channel

Near the critical layer, a large-amplitude laser beam creates a transverse plasma channel due to the ponderomotive force. The axis of the channel is normal to the ambient density gradient. Inside the channel, the laser beam decays into counter-propagating ion acoustic and Langmuir waves. A nonlocal theory of the process is developed for a parabolic density profile. The growth rate of the instability is significantly reduced due to the nonlocal effects     

Effect of relativistic elliptical beam modulation on excitation of surface plasma waves in a magnetized dusty plasma column with elliptical cross section

Abstract

The excitation of surface plasma waves due to the interaction of an elliptical relativistic density modulated electron beam with the magnetized dusty plasma column with elliptical cross-section has been studied. The dispersion relation of surface plasma waves has been retrieved from the derived dispersion relation by considering that the beam is absent and there is no dust in the plasma elliptical cylinder. It is shown that the Cherenkov and fast cyclotron interactions appear between the beam and eigen-modes of plasma column. The growth rate of the instability increases with the beam density and modulation index as one-third power of the beam density in Cherenkov interaction and is proportional to the square root of beam density in fast cyclotron interaction. The numerical results and graphs are presented, too.     

Generation of strong Langmuir fields during optical breakdown of a dense gas

Results are presented from theoretical studies and computer simulations of the resonant excitation of Langmuir waves during the ionization of a homogeneous gas by high-intensity laser radiation. Two mechanisms for the formation of nonuniform resonant structures in the discharge are examined: plasma-resonance ionization instability, resulting in the density modulation along the electric field vector, and gas breakdown in the field of a transversely inhomogeneous laser beam (a Bessel beam produced by an axicon lens). In both cases, the transition of the plasma density through the critical value is accompanied by the generation of intense Langmuir waves, the formation of fast ionization fronts, and the appearance of long-lived quasi-turbulent states.     

Excitation of Electromagnetic Modes in a Dielectric-Loaded Waveguide via Cyclotron Resonance Interaction

An analytical treatment of the excitation of electromagnetic modes by an axial electron beam in a cylindrical waveguide partially loaded with a dielectric is presented. Equations describing the mode structure of the waves are obtained in cylindrical geometry. Using apropriate boundary conditions a dispersion relation is derived in the weak-beam approximation (?b >> ?). In addition to the conventional Cerenkov interaction, the slow-cyclotron resonance interaction (? ? ?V0 - ?c), which involves the coupling of the TM mode of the waveguide with the slow cyclotron beam mode, is also seen to be important. The growth rate of the instability scales as n01/2 (where n0 is the beam density), decreases with an increase in V0, and is rather insensitive to the variation in the magnetic field.     

Cavitating Langmuir turbulence in the terrestrial aurora

Langmuir cavitons have been artificially produced in Earth's ionosphere, but evidence of naturally occurring cavitation has been elusive. By measuring and modeling the spectra of electrostatic plasma modes, we show that natural cavitating, or strong, Langmuir turbulence does occur in the ionosphere, via a process in which a beam of auroral electrons drives Langmuir waves, which in turn produce cascading Langmuir and ion-acoustic excitations and cavitating Langmuir turbulence. The data presented here are the first direct evidence of cavitating Langmuir turbulence occurring naturally in any space or astrophysical plasma.     

Three-halves harmonic emission from a laser filament in a plasmachannel

A self-trapped laser filament is susceptible to decay-producing radially localized Langmuir waves. A nonlinear interaction of the pump wave with the density oscillation at the Langmuir frequency gives rise to three-halves harmonic emissions. Using a basis-function expansion technique, the emitted power in the backward direction is obtained. It decreases with the increasing size of the filament     

Effect of random density irregularities on nonlinear evolution of Langmuir waves in interplanetary medium

The evolution of nonlinear Langmuir waves in the interplanetary medium is investigated by appropriately accounting for the random density irregularities of the medium. A pair of modified Zakharov equations, which describe these waves, is solved numerically as an initial value problem for large scale (≫ 10² km) initial pertubations. For an ion acoustic-Langmuir solitary wave, the random irregularities damp the Langmuir wave by way of scattering and let the ion density perturbation radiate away in a few days. However an initial solitary or shock-like Langmuir wave excites the ion density perturbations within a fraction of a second, and then itself gets damped. These effects will strongly decelerate the collapse of large scale Langmuir waves. The possibility of detecting these processes, by means of interplanetary scintillation, is discussed. The authors felicitate Prof. D S Kothari on his eightieth birthday and dedicate this paper to him on this occasion.     

Effect of plasma on efficiency enhancement in a high powerrelativistic backward wave oscillator

A linear theory of the excitation of electromagnetic waves in a plasma-filled backward-wave oscillator driven by an intense relativistic electron beam is presented. It is found that the spatial growth rate of backward-wave instability exhibits a resonant increase for a particular value of fill-plasma density. Results are compared to the results of an experiment by K. Minami et al. (1988) on a high-power backward-wave oscillator     

A transport model and numerical simulation of the high-frequency dynamics of three-dimensional beam trusses

The theory of microlocal analysis shows that the energy density associated with the high-frequency vibrations of a three-dimensional Timoshenko beam satisfies a Liouville-type transport equation. In the present application, the material of the beam is assumed to be isotropic. Its parameters are allowed to vary along the beam axis at length scales much larger than the wavelength of the high-frequency waves traveling in it. Moreover, the curvature and torsion of the beam are accounted for. The first part of the paper focuses on the derivation of the transport model for a single three-dimensional beam. In order to extend this model to beam trusses, the reflection/transmission phenomena of the energy fluxes at junctions of beams are described by power flow reflection/transmission operators in a subsequent part. For numerical simulations, a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method is used on account of the discontinuities of the energy density field at the junctions. Thus, a complete mechanical-numerical modeling of the linear transient dynamics of beam trusses is proposed. It is illustrated by numerical examples highlighting some remarkable features of high-frequency vibrations: The onset of a diffusive regime characterized by energy equipartition rules at late times. Energy diffusion is prompted by the multiple reflection/transmission of waves at the junctions, with possible mode (polarization) conversions. This is the regime applicable to the statistical energy analysis of structural acoustics systems. The main purpose of this research is to develop an effective strategy to simulate and predict the transient response of beam trusses impacted by acoustic or mechanical shocks.     

Numerical simulations of type-III solar radio bursts

The first numerical simulations are presented for type-III solar radio bursts in the inhomogeneous solar corona and interplanetary space, that include microscale quasilinear and nonlinear processes, intermediate-scale driven ambient density fluctuations, and large scale evolution of electron beams, Langmuir and ion sound waves, and fundamental and harmonic electromagnetic emission. Bidirectional coronal emission is asymmetric between the upward and downward directions, and harmonic emission dominates fundamental emission. In interplanetary space, fundamental and/or harmonic emission can be important. Langmuir and ion sound waves are bursty and the statistics of Langmuir wave energy agree well with the predictions of stochastic growth theory.     

A Particle-in-Cell Simulation Study on Harmonic Waves Excited by Electron Beams in Unmagnetized Plasmas

The excitation of harmonic waves by an electron beam is studied with electrostatic simulations.The results suggest that the harmonic waves are excited during the linear stage of the simulation and are developed in the nonlinear stage.First,the Langmuir waves(LWs)are excited by the beam electrons.Then the coupling of the forward propagating LWs and beam modes will excite the second harmonic waves.The third harmonic waves will be produced if the lower velocity side of the beam still has a positive velocity gradient.The beam velocity decreases at the same time,which provides the energy for wave excitation.We find that it is difficult to excite the harmonic waves with the increase of the thermal velocity of the beam electrons.The beam electrons will be heated after waves are excited,and then the part of the forward propagating LWs will turn into electron acoustic waves under the condition with a large enough intensity of beam electrons.Moreover,the action of ions hardly affects the formation of harmonic waves.     

Observations of resonant modes formation in microwave generated magnetized plasmas

Ion sources have a significant number of applications in accelerator facilities and in industrial applications. In particular, the electron cyclotron resonance ion sources (ECRIS) are nowadays the most effective devices that can feed particle accelerators in a continuous and reliable way, providing high current beams of low and medium charge state ions and lower, but still remarkable, beam current for highly charged ions. In recent years several experiments have shown that the current, the charge states and even the beam shape change by slightly varying the microwave frequency (the so-called frequency tuning effect – FTE). The theoretical explanation of these results is based on the difference in the electromagnetic field pattern over the resonance surface, i.e. that region where the electrons resonantly interact with the incoming wave. In order to be consistent with the experiments, this model requires that standing waves are formed also in presence of a dense plasma. The proof was sought by means of a series of measurements performed with a network analyzer and with a plasma reactor operating at 2.45 GHz, according to the principles of the microwave discharge ion sources (MDIS). The measurements have been carried out with the aim to achieve the electromagnetic characterization of the plasma chamber in terms of possible excited resonant modes with and without plasma, and they reported that resonant modes are excited inside the cavity even in presence of a dense plasma. It was observed that the plasma dynamics strongly depends on the structure of the standing waves that are generated. The measurement of the eigen-frequencies' shifts were carried out for several values of pressure and RF power, thus linking the shift with the plasma density measured by a Langmuir probe. The changes in plasma shape, density and electron temperature have been also monitored for different operating conditions. A strong variation of plasma properties has been observed as a consequence of the introduction of the Langmuir probe inside the resonant cavity, thus demonstrating that the standing wave can be strongly perturbed even by means of relatively small metallic electrodes. The measurements reported hereinafter are relevant also for ECRIS, because they confirm the validity of the theoretical model that describes the frequency tuning.     

Effect on Landau damping rates for a non-Maxwellian distribution function consisting of two electron populations

In many physical situations where a laser or electron beam passes through a dense plasma,hot low-density electron populations can be generated,resulting in a particle distribution function consisting of a dense cold population and a small hot population.Presence of such low-density electron distributions can alter the wave damping rate.A kinetic model is employed to study the Landau damping of Langmuir waves when a small hot electron population is present in the dense cold electron population with non-Maxwellian distribution functions.Departure of plasma from Maxwellian distributions significantly alters the damping rates as compared to the Maxwellian plasma.Strong damping is found for highly nonMaxwellian distributions as well as plasmas with a higher density and hot electron population.Existence of weak damping is also established when the distribution contains broadened flat tops at the low energies or tends to be Maxwellian.These results may be applied in both experimental and space physics regimes.     

Particle Simulation of Electrostatic Waves Driven by an Electron Beam

A one-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell simulation is performed to study electrostatic wave excitation due to an electron beam in a plasma system. The excited fundamental and harmonic waves are analyzed with the fast Fourier transformation and the wavelet transformation. The second harmonic is suggested to be generated by wave-wave coupling during the nonlinear evolution, which involves forward propagating and backward propagating Langmuir waves. Furthermore, the background electrons may be heated and accelerated by the electrostatic waves.     

3/2omega0 radiation from the laser-driven two-plasmon decay instability in an inhomogeneous plasma

We present the results of the first reduced model simulations of the nonlinear development of the two-plasmon decay instability in an inhomogeneous plasma, including properties of the 3/2 harmonic emission. A sharp increase in radiation and Langmuir turbulence fluctuation levels occurs above a threshold laser intensity that depends on initial fluctuation levels. We study the competition between the linear propagation of Langmuir waves in the density gradient and the nonlinear saturation due to the Langmuir decay instability. The secondary decay Langmuir waves can provide the dominant source of the radiation and are essential to explain experiments.     

Extraordinary-mode radiation produced by linear-mode conversion of langmuir waves

Linear-mode conversion (LMC) of Langmuir waves to radiation near the plasma frequency at density gradients is important for space and astrophysical phenomena. We study LMC in warm magnetized plasmas using numerical electron fluid simulations when the density gradient is parallel to the ambient magnetic field (B0). We demonstrate that LMC can produce extraordinary- (x-) as well as ordinary- (o-) mode radiation from Langmuir waves, contrary to earlier expectations of o mode only. Equal amounts of o- and x-mode radiation are produced in the unmagnetized limit. The x-mode efficiency decreases as B0 increases, while the o-mode efficiency oscillates due to interference between incoming and reflected Langmuir waves. Both x and o modes should be produced for typical coronal and interplanetary parameters, alleviating the depolarization problem for type III solar radio bursts.     

Propagation of a TE surface mode in a relativistic electron beam-quantum plasma system

The dispersion properties of a transverse electric (TE) surface waves propagating along the interface between a magneto-quantum plasma-relativistic beam system and vacuum are studied by using the quantum hydrodynamic model. The general dispersion relations are derived and analyzed in some special cases of interest. Moreover, the effects of density gradients for the beam and plasma on the dispersion properties of surface waves are investigated. The kind of dispersion relations depends strongly on the ambient magnetic field Bo via the gyro-frequency ωc, the quantum parameters, and the width of the plasma layer as well as the relativistic factor for the electron beam. It is found that the quantum effects play a crucial role to facilitate the propagation of TE surface waves.