Anomalous skin effect for anisotropic electron velocity distribution function

Abstract

Summary form only given. We show that anomalous skin effect in a plasma with a highly anisotropic electron velocity distribution function (EVDF) is very different from skin effect in a plasma with the isotropic EVDF. We have derived an analytical solution for the electric field penetrated into plasma with the EVDF described as a Maxwellian with two temperatures T/sub x//spl Gt/T/sub z/, where x is the direction along plasma boundary and z is the direction perpendicular plasma boundary. In a recent Letter, it was shown that a highly anisotropic electron velocity distribution function (EVDF) yields a large skin-layer depth compared with the isotropic EVDF. The electromagnetic wave is assumed to propagate also along z-axis in vacuum. The skin layer was determined to be much longer than the skin layer in a plasma with isotropic EVDF. The authors showed that under conditions T/sub x//spl Gt/T/sub z/; c//spl omega//sub p//spl Lt//spl nu//sub Tx///spl omega/;/spl omega//sub p//spl Gt//spl omega/ where /spl omega/ is the incident wave frequency, /spl omega//sub p/ is the plasma frequency, /spl nu//sub Tx/=/spl radic/T/sub x//m, the electric field profile is exponential E(z)/spl sim/exp(-z/l/sub x/) where l/sub x/=/spl nu//sub Tx///spl omega/. In their analysis authors of assumed from the beginning that skin depth is longer than /spl nu//sub Tz///spl omega/, where /spl nu//sub Tz/=/spl radic/T/sub z//m. We have performed kinetic analysis similar to and obtained an analytical solution for the electric field. We show that skin layer actually consists of two distinctive regions of width of order /spl nu//sub Tx///spl omega/ and /spl nu//sub Tz///spl omega/, the latter short region was missed in.