On an anomaly of the thermal filamentation mechanism in a high-power electromagnetic field of a strongly collisional plasma

Abstract

It is shown that, under the conditions when the mean free path of electrons in a fully ionized plasma is small compared with the London plasma length, the thermal mechanism of inverse bremsstrahlung absorption and electronic conductivity has a stabilizing action on filamentation instability of high-power electromagnetic radiation, in contrast to the known case of comparatively low-intensity radiation. This new nonlinear property of a plasma is shown to be determined by a decrease in the effectiveness of plasma heating in a heating pumping field with increasing the intensity of radiation if electron oscillations have above-thermal rates.