Plasma electron hole oscillatory velocity instability
Name
1701.03140.pdf
Size
1.81 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
772e0c72009fca1972b252d1f171d6f2
Author(s)
Zhou, Chuteng
Hutchinson, Ian Horner
Date Issued
September 2017
Journal
Journal of Plasma Physics
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Citation
Zhou, Chuteng, and Ian H. Hutchinson. “Plasma Electron Hole Oscillatory Velocity Instability.” Journal of Plasma Physics 83, no. 05 (September 25, 2017).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
In this paper, we report a new type of instability of electron holes (EHs) interacting with passing ions. The nonlinear interaction of EHs and ions is investigated using a new theory of hole kinematics. It is shown that the oscillation in the velocity of the EH parallel to the magnetic field direction becomes unstable when the hole velocity in the ion frame is slower than a few times the cold ion sound speed. This instability leads to the emission of ion-acoustic waves from the solitary hole and decay in its magnitude. The instability mechanism can drive significant perturbations in the ion density. The instability threshold, oscillation frequency and instability growth rate derived from the theory yield quantitative agreement with the observations from a novel high-fidelity hole-tracking particle-in-cell code.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377817000678
