Collisional Damping of the Whistler Mode in a Dense, Marm Magneto-plasma

Abstract

In the cold-collisionless plasma theory, it is shown the whistler mode propagates through an overdense magneto-plasma (i.e. a plasma whose plasma frequency is greater than the frequency of the wave) at a frequency that is below the electron cyclotron frequency of the plasma. In the actual laboratory plasmas, the effects of the collisions may play an-important-role in the propagation of the waves. Those 4fects are examined in the case of a warm plasma, such as the after grow plasma. As the temperature is very low in this case, it is resonable to consider Coulomb interaction may play a dominant part rather than electron-neutral collisions. In this paper, we obtained the dispersion equation and the apatial-damping constants of the whistler mode by applying Comisar's method (treating the collisional terms which appear in the Boltzmann-Fokker-Planck equation for longitudinal plasma oscillation) to the corresponding problem for the transverse waves in the presence of uniform magnetic field. The results of calculations are shown to be in good agreement with experiment.