PLASMA VOLUMETRIC AMPLIFICATION OF EMITTED MICROWAVES

摘要

Counter-streaming large-diameter electron beams interacting with plasma in a steady-state laboratory experiment were observed to generate coherent microwave radiation at twice the plasma frequency with a quadrupole radiation pattern. The radiated microwave power density was non-linearly enhanced over the power density obtained from the single beam-plasma system. When the counter-streaming beams interacting with the plasma volume reached a steady state and had the same energy, the radiated microwave power-density scaled exponentially with input beam energy and increased with ion mass of the plasma. These exciting experimental results published in 1984 (Ref.1) characterize a pseudo-maser action in a colliding electron beams-plasma system, which as yet, have not been theoretically explained qualitatively or quantitatively at all. Employing quantum formalism of the weak plasma turbulence theory for 'plasma emission' processes, these experimental results are accurately explained here and the proof-of-concept of a classical 'maser' like action in a steady-state colliding beams-plasma system is established by a quasi-quantum or semi-classical theory.