Generation of an electrostatic pulse by two electromagnetic pulses in a plasma

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of the excitation of an electrostatic pulse in a hot collisionless plasma by two Gaussian EM pulses at the difference frequency w1–w2, w1 and w2being the angular frequencies of two EM pulses. When the EM pulses have intensity distributions which are uniform in space and Gaussian in time, the generated electrostatic pulse is Gaussian in time with pulse width [t210 t220/ (t210+ t220)]½, where t10 and t20 are the EM pulse widths. When. the two EM pulses have Gaussian distributions in a plane transverse to the direction of propagation, the generation phenomena are considerably modified as a result of the cross-focusing of the two EM pulses.