Nonlinear Plasma Dynamics Below the Cyclotron Frequency

Abstract

Publisher Summary Plasma is a soup of electromagnetic fields, ions, and electrons. The essential aspect of this state of matter is that the charged particle components interact strongly with the electromagnetic field. The electrons are very light, so their vibration frequencies are high. Thus, in the low frequency regime they closely follow the ions. The ions all tend to move together over the course of these slow time scales. The next thing to notice is that these equations are a generalization of the Euler equations of fluid dynamics. Analogously, nonlinear flows can develop singularities infinite time, leading to shocks. The phase velocity of plane waves in a plasma as a function of the angle between the normal to the plane wave and the magnetic field direction. S is the sound speed and A is the speed of the Alfven modes. The null to null lines lie on a circle whose plane is orthogonal to the paper.