Current-driven Langmuir oscillations and amplitude modulations-Another view on electron beam-plasma interaction

摘要

The origin of Langmuir amplitude modulations and harmonic waves observed in the solar wind and in planetary foreshock regions is investigated in beam plasmas where the saturation process of the beam instability is accompanied with the formation of a plateau distribution. This saturated state represents a current which is shown to drive homogeneous electric field oscillations at the plasma frequency. This simple mechanismhas been ignored inmost numerical studies based on Vlasov or particle-in-cell simulations because of the use of the Poisson equation which is not suitable to describe the mechanism of current drive in plasmas with immobile ions; instead, Ampere's law must be used. A simple fluid description of stable plateau plasmas, coupled with Ampere's law, is applied to illustrate the basic elements of current-driven Langmuir oscillations. If beam-generated Langmuir/electron-acoustic waves with frequencies above or below the plasma frequency are simultaneously present, beating of both wave modes leads to Langmuir amplitude modulations, thus providing an alternative to parametric decay. Furthermore, very important implications of our studies (presented separately) concern the electrostatic and electromagnetic second harmonic generation by nonlinear interaction of Langmuir oscillations with finite wave number modes which are driven by the plateau current as well.