Plasma equilibrium in a semiclassical plasma due to non-resonant wave particle interactions

Abstract

A nonresonant perturbative approach has been utilized to probe the modification of the equilibrium plasma distribution function due to plasma interaction with externally launched high-frequency large-amplitude RF waves in the presence of quantum effects. The quantum distribution function from the complete Wigner equation has been obtained for a high-frequency wave with constant amplitude. For waves with weak spatial or temporal modulation, the equilibrium distribution function has been obtained by solving the Wigner equation as an initial or boundary-value problem and retaining only lowest-order quantum effects. In the dipole approximation, a higher order diffusion has been identified in addition to quantum modified ponderomotive and quasilinear diffusion effects. Additional terms of the Wigner equation give the impression of higher order diffusion effects in the system.