Shear Alfvén waves in a magnetic beach and the roles of electron and ion damping

DOI PDF 被引用文献1件
  • S. Vincena
    Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
  • W. Gekelman
    Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
  • J. Maggs
    Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095

抄録

<jats:p>Experiments are performed in the Large Plasma Device (LaPD) [Gekelman et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 62, 2875 (1991)] at the University of California, Los Angeles to study the propagation of the shear Alfvén wave in a parallel gradient of the background magnetic field. The waves are excited by modulating a field-aligned electron current drawn to a disk antenna with a radius on the order of the electron skin-depth, δ=c/ωpe. The resulting shear waves have a nonzero parallel electric field and propagate both parallel and perpendicular to the background magnetic field. In this experiment, the wave is launched in a region where its frequency, ω equals one-half the local ion-cyclotron frequency, ωci and the local Alfvén speed, vA, is approximately equal to the electron thermal speed, v̄e. The wave propagates along a slowly decreasing background field to where ω=ωci and vA≈v̄e/2. The wave thus propagates from a region where Landau damping is significant to where ion-cyclotron damping dominates. Detailed two dimensional measurements of the wave magnetic field morphology are presented. The measured wavelength decreases in accord with WKB solutions of a modified wave equation. Wave damping is also observed and dissipation by both ions and electrons is required in the WKB model to fit the data. Suppression of the damping via electrons in the model results in a predicted wave magnetic field amplitude twenty times larger at the ion-cyclotron resonance point than observed.</jats:p>

収録刊行物

被引用文献 (1)*注記

もっと見る

詳細情報 詳細情報について

問題の指摘

ページトップへ