Wave modes in a magnetoplasma with anisotropic perturbation pressure–fluid and kinetic calculations

Abstract

The fluid quintic dispersion equation and the full kinetic Boltzmann–Vlasov equation have been programmed for a one-species magnetoplasma in a form permitting direct comparison between them. The quintic equation yields five wave-modes, two electromagnetic, a Langmuir or Bernstein mode and two transversely polarized acoustic modes driven by the trace-free part of the anisotropic pressure tensor. The slower acoustic mode is found in the kinetic analysis to be evanescent, the other suffers appreciable Landau damping except in the first gyroharmonic band when its phase velocity approaches and even exceeds that of the Langmuir mode, with a resultant mixing of modal properties. The Langmuir or Bernstein mode refractive index surfaces found in the fluid and kinetic analyses are generally in good agreement, but gyroharmonic wave–particle interactions seen in the Bernstein modes are missed in the fluid analysis, such as resonant effects very close to the gyroharmonic frequencies and strong damping at all propagation angles when the wave frequency lies in a forbidden Bernstein region. In all cases the fluid analysis provides additional information on wave polarization and generalized energy fluxes–electromagnetic and acoustic–permitting easy identification of modes.