Steady‐state self‐focusing and filamentation of whistlers in a plasma

Sodha, M. S.; Tripathi, V. K.

doi:doi:10.1063/1.323783

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Journal of Applied Physics / Volume 48 / Issue 3

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J. Appl. Phys. 48, 1078 (1977); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.323783 (7 pages)

Steady‐state self‐focusing and filamentation of whistlers in a plasma

M. S. Sodha¹ and V. K. Tripathi²

¹Department of Electrical Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
²Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

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Using the earlier expressions for the nonlinear dielectric tensor of a magnetoplasma, the authors have analyzed the steady‐state self‐focusing and filamentation of high‐power whistlers. On the short time scale (t≪τ_ϵ, τ_ϵ being the energy relaxation time), the nonlinearity arises because of the ponderomotive force and is responsible for self‐focusing up to very low frequencies. On the time scale of energy relaxation time, the dominant nonlinearity arises because of nonuniform heating and redistribution of electrons and causes self‐focusing only when ω≳ω_c/2 (ω and ω_c being the wave and electron cyclotron frequencies, respectively). When the power of the whistler equals the critical power for self‐focusing, it propagates without convergence or divergence and also guides a second weak whistler to propagate without convergence or divergence. These results are in quantitative agreement with the experiments of Stenzel. At very high powers, self‐focusing of whistlers is not possible by any of the two mechanisms; in fact, the beam suffers divergence. A plane uniform whistler of high‐power density is found to be unstable for small‐scale intensity fluctuations and the growth rate of fluctuations is seen to be a saturating function of power density of the beam.