Wave precession as a consequence of the nonlinearly developed birefringence in plasmas

Abstract

In plasmas, even in the absence of any static magnetic field, due to nonlinearities of the medium, the left and right circular polarization components of a strong electromagnetic wave are found to have different dispersion rates. Using this property of nonlinearly induced birefringence, the rate of precessional rotation and wavenumber shift of a strong elliptically polarized electromagnetic wave passing through a cold, homogeneous, collision-free, and unmagnetized plasma are derived analytically.