Non-modal analysis of the diocotron instability: Cylindrical geometry

Abstract

The temporal evolution of the linear diocotron instability of the cylindrical annular plasma column is investigated by employing the extension of the shearing modes methodology to the cylindrical geometry. It was obtained that the spatial time-dependent distortion of the electron density initial perturbations by shear flows leads to the non-modal evolution of the potential, which was referred to as the manifestation of the continuous spectrum. The evolution process leads toward the convergence to the phase-locking configuration of the mutually growing normal modes.