Simulations of turbulent plasma heating by powerful electron beams

Abstract

Basic mechanisms of turbulent plasma heating by powerful electron beams are studied using numerical simulations. Both particle-in-cell and hybrid codes are used to investigate how beam-plasma instability evolves and saturates in the case of continuously injected electron beam. For sufficiently high plasma temperature beam driven turbulence is found to operate in the regime of the constant pump, when the saturation level of heating power is determined solely by the nonlinear interaction of beam particles with resonant waves and does not depend on the turbulence structure in the nonresonant part of the spectrum.