Derivation of macroscopic equations for a warm two-fluid turbulent plasma and applications of the results

Thesis/Dissertation · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1981

OSTI ID:6644338

Lee, N C

A system of equations for the description of a turbulent plasma is obtained in a fully ionized, collisionless, warm two-fluid plasma model. The time-averaged macroscopic motion of the plasma is shown to be modified by ponderomotive foces arising from the interactions of fluctuating fields. A new expression for the ponderomotive force found in this thesis work is compared in detail with the results obtained by Washimi and Karpman and Klima and Petrizika. These authors used the cold plasma approximation. It is shown that our expression reduces to the results of the aforementioned authors under the same conditions assumed by them. But, for a more general condition - a finite temperature, an inhomogeneous and a nonstationary plasma - the results we derive contain additional terms. The importance of these new terms in low frequency fields is discussed. Until now, studies of the effects of the ponderomotive force have been limited to high frequency fields or long wavelength fields, primarily because previous derivations of the ponderomotive forces were based on cold plasma approximation. The use of the more general expression derived in this thesis is expected to broaden the area of application of the ponderomotive force effects in collisionless plasma physics.

• OSTI ID: 6644338
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700105* -- Fusion Energy-- Plasma Research-- Plasma Kinetics-Theoretical-- (-1987)
COLD PLASMA
COLLISIONLESS PLASMA
EQUATIONS
KINETIC EQUATIONS
PLASMA
TURBULENCE