Ponderomotive effects in nonadiabatic regimes and in nonneutral plasmas

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:5989234

Lamb, B M

Ponderomotive phenomena arising from nonlinear effects of RF electric fields in plasmas have been studied extensively for the case of neutral plasmas. The first part of this dissertation is concerned with the ponderomotive force in nonneutral plasmas. In a neutral plasma, the balance between the ponderomotive force and the plasma pressure results in density cavities with a fractional density depression given by the ratio of RF field energy to plasma thermal energy. In the second part of this dissertation a new theory of the ponderomotive effect is presented that agrees with the conventional theory when the particle motion is adiabatic, but predicts both a reduced ponderomotive force and also cyclotron resonant heating for plasma frequencies near the cyclotron frequency. Although the analytical theory involves an expansion (to order E/sub 2/) about the particle's unperturbed trjectory, exact numerical orbit calculations corroborate the theoretical results, even for localized fields strong enough to reflect incident particles. Finally, the theory is compared to experimental measurements of the ponderomotive effect and found to be in good agreement over a considerable range of parameters.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Los Angeles (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5989234
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700105* -- Fusion Energy-- Plasma Research-- Plasma Kinetics-Theoretical-- (-1987)
BETA RATIO
ELECTRIC FIELDS
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PLASMA
PLASMA PRESSURE