APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. E » Volume 65 » Issue 3

Phys. Rev. E 65, 036407 (2002) [11 pages]

Unified formulation for inhomogeneity-driven instabilities in the lower-hybrid range
Download: PDF (245 kB) or Buy this Article (Use Article Pack) Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

O. J. G. Silveira * and L. F. Ziebell †
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Caixa Postal 15051, 91501-970 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

R. Gaelzer ‡
Instituto de Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), Caixa Postal 354, 96010-900 Pelotas, RS, Brazil

Peter H. Yoon §
Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

Received 6 September 2001; published 19 February 2002

A local dispersion relation that describes inhomogeneity-driven instabilities in the lower-hybrid range is derived following a procedure that correctly describes energy exchange between waves and particles in inhomogeneous media, correcting some inherent ambiguities associated with the standard formalism found in the literature. Numerical solutions of this improved dispersion relation show that it constitutes a unified formulation for the instabilities in the lower-hybrid range, describing the so-called modified two-stream instability, excited by the ion cross-field drift, including the ion Weibel instability, and also describing the lower-hybrid drift instability, which is due to inhomogeneity effects on the electron population.


©2002 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v65/e036407
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.65.036407
PACS: 52.25.Mq, 52.35.-g, 94.30.Tz

* Email address: omar@if.ufrgs.br
† Email address: ziebell@if.ufrgs.br
‡ Email address: rudi@ufpel.tche.br
§ Email address: yoonp@ipst.umd.edu

[ Abstract  |  Previous article  |  Next article  |  Issue 3 ]