Strong Langmuir turbulence in a magnetic field

Abstract

A series of fluid simulations are reported on strong Langmuir turbulence in two dimensions in the presence of a magnetic field. Starting with a group of Langmuir waves such as would be generated by an electron beam, the strong turbulence is initially one-dimensional, forming planar solitons. With no transverse wavenumber spread in the initial waves (Δk⊥=0), the magnetic field leads to more pancake-shaped solitons by reducing k*⊥ (the shortest unstable mode), but has little effect on the collapse. For an initial wave packet, if k*⊥<Δk⊥, the transverse collapse does not occur.