On the heating of a dense plasma at parametric cyclotron resonance

Abstract

The penetration of the field of a standing electromagnetic wave of the mode H011 excited in a cylindrical cavity into a plasma column, placed along the symmetry axis of the e.m. field, is experimentally studied. It is shown that, the field with such a configuration penetrates, without appreciable distortion, into a plasma with lower as well as much higher than the cut-off density. In the present experiments the authors could succeed in reaching up to n/ncut-off approximately=102 where the complete penetration of the h.f. field into the plasma was registered. The h.f. heating of a plasma, with the density exceeding the cut-off value by two orders, has been achieved at the conditions of parametric cyclotron resonance for electrons ( omega =2 omega ce).