Nonlinear interaction of Farley-Buneman waves

• Main Authors: Volosevich, Alexandra V., Meister, Claudia-Veronika
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Universität Potsdam 1998
• Subjects: Physics
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-14851; http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2007/1485/

The nonlinear interaction of waves excited by the modified two-stream instability (Farley-Buneman instability) is considered. It is found that, during the linear stage of wave growth, the enhanced pressure of the high-frequency part of the waves locally generates a ponderomotive force. This force acts on the plasma particles and redistributes them. Thus an additional electrostatic polarization field occurs, which influences the low-frequency part of the waves. Then, the low-frequency waves also cause a redistribution of the high-frequency waves. In the paper, a self-consistent system of equations is obtained, which describes the nonlinear interaction of the waves. It is shown that the considered mechanism of wave interaction causes a nonlinear stabilization of the high-frequency waves’ growth and a formation of local density structures of the charged particles. The density modifications of the charged particles during the non-linear stage of wave growth and the possible interval of aspect angles of the high-frequency waves are estimated.