Laboratory Study of Nonlinear Trapping of Magnetized Langmuir Waves Inside a Density Depletion

Abstract

The formation of a small-scale plasma density depletion region extended along the ambient magnetic field and caused by the nonlinear interaction of the upper-hybrid plasma waves with a magnetoplasma has been observed under laboratory conditions modeling the ionospheric heating experiments. Plasma waves are trapped inside the depletion due to their specific dispersion properties. The threshold of the nonlinear wave trapping significantly increases in the vicinity of the harmonics of the electron gyrofrequency.