Fluctuations associated with plasma density and temperature striations.

摘要

his dissertation explores the stability properties of fluctuations that can be spontaneously generated in a magnetic field-aligned pressure striation whose transverse scale length is comparable to the electron skin depth. This situation is relevant to auroral beam acceleration and to the study of anomalous heat transport.;The generation of purely electrostatic drift waves and electromagnetic drift-Alfven waves is investigated using a kinetic model which includes the effect of electron pitch angle scattering. A system of two coupled, linear eigenvalue equations is derived to investigate the generation of electromagnetic modes. The equations are formulated in terms of the parallel fluctuating fields ;The full eigenmode analysis examines the separate and combined effects of density and temperature gradients. The existence of three fundamental eigen-modes associated with a density gradient are identified in the ;Results are compared to a recent laboratory experiment (J.E. Maggs and G.J. Morales, Phys. Plasmas 4, 290 (1997)). In agreement with experiment, the calculations demonstrate the existence of a spectrum of unstable eigenmodes with frequencies in the range