The nonlinear behaviour of surface waves propagating along a plasma column is investigated. The experiments include (i) measurements of the nonlinear dispersion of the waves and (ii) observation of the evolution of the shape of the wave envelope and of the wave spectrum when the waves are excited with an amplitude-modulated signal. Comparison with theory shows that (i) the measured nonlinear wavelength shift corresponds to increasing wave phase velocity with increasing wave amplitude, (ii) the observed narrowing of the wave envelope can be associated with the formation of periodic nonlinear waves described by dn Jacobi elliptic function solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and (iii) the observed strong changes of the wave spectrum are mainly related to a nonlinear effect of phase modulation.

Motivated by plasma and wave measurements in the cusp auroral region, we have investigated electron-acoustic solitons in a plasma consisting of fluid ions, a cool fluid electron and a hot Boltzmann electron component. A recently described method of integrating the full nonlinear fluid equations as an initial-value problem is used to construct electron-acoustic solitons of arbitrary amplitude. Using the reductive perturbation technique, a Korteweg-de Vries equation, which includes the effects of finite cool-electron and ion temperatures, is derived, and results are compared with the full theory. Both theories admit rarefactive soliton solutions only. The solitons are found to propagate at speeds greater than the electron sound speed (ε0c/ε0ε)½υε, and their profiles are independent of ion parameters. It is found that the KdV theory is not a good approximation for intermediate-strength solitons. Nor does it exhibit the fact that the cool- to hot-electron temperature ratio restricts the parameter range over which electron-acoustic solitons may exist, as found in the arbitrary-amplitude calculations.

A theoretical and numerical analysis is performed on the conditions under which electron stochastic detrapping due to small misalignments between the laser wave vector and the global symmetry of the system occurs in magnetically guided free-electron lasers. In particular, it is shown that the threshold for stochasticity is only weakly dependent on the transverse momentum of trapped particles, which allows some simple general conclusions to be drawn regarding the maximum values allowed for this misalignment.

Equations are presented for the coupling between high- and low-frequency waves in a collisional plasma that models the ionospheric E region. New collapsing solutions can be found from these equations, even for frequencies smaller than the electron–neutral and ion–neutral collision frequencies.

The full relativistic dielectric tensor for a Maxwellian plasma in the electron-cyclotron range of frequencies is investigated. A new representation for arbitrary values of the wave frequency and direction of propagation of the anti-Hermitian part is presented that avoids the standard expansions of the Bessel functions. A compact form of the wave damping for ω ≽ 2ωc is obtained that is useful for the investigation of synchrotron radiation in hot plasmas.

A driven dissipative magnetohydrodynamic state is calculated that is consistent with a non-ideal boundary condition relevant to magnetically and mechanically active boundaries of laboratory or astrophysical plasmas. The solution is based on the results from previous analytical and computational investigations of electrically driven states, and is characterized by finite helical distortions and a small flow velocity. It is shown that such a configuration may persist even in the absence of previously assumed rigid perfectly conducting boundaries. It is proposed as a model for an astrophysical ‘flux rope’, and suggests an additional in situ diagnostic for such flux ropes.

The dispersion relation for low-frequency surface waves at a current sheet between two magnetized plasmas is derived using the cold-plasma dielectric tensor with finite ion-cyclotron frequency. The magnetic field direction is allowed to change discontinuously across the sheet, but the plasma density remains constant. The cyclotron frequency causes a splitting of the dispersion relation into a number of mode branches with frequencies both less than and greater than the ion-cyclotron frequency. The existence of these modes depends in particular upon the degree of magnetic field discontinuity and the direction of wave propagation in the sheet relative to the magnetic field directions. Sometimes two modes can exist for the same direction of propagation. The existence of modes undamped by Alfvén resonance absorption is predicted. Analytical solutions are obtained in the low-frequency and magnetic-field-reversal limits. The solutions are obtained numerically in the general case.

A solution is presented for electron plasma oscillations in a thermalized plasma, at arbitrary ratios of the Debye length AλD and the perturbation wavelength λ. The limit λD≪λ corresponds to the conventional fluid-like theory of small particle excursions, whereas λD≫λ corresponds to the free-streaming limit of strong kinetic phase mixing due to large particle excursions. A strong large-Debye-distance (LDD) effect already appears when λD ≳ λ. The initial amplitude of the fluid-like contribution to the macroscopic density perturbation then becomes small compared with the contribution from the free-streaming part. As a consequence, only a small fraction of the density perturbation remains after a limited number of kinetic damping times of the free-streaming part. The present analysis can be considered as a first exercise in an attempt to tackle the far more difficult problem of large-Larmor-radius (LLR) effects in a magnetized plasma. The analysis further shows that a representation in terms of normal modes of the form exp (— iωt) leads to amplitude factors of these modes that are related to each other and that depend on the combined free-streaming and fluid behaviour of the plasma. Consequently, these modes are coupled and cannot be treated as independent of each other.

Runaway processes on neutron stars leading to the sudden release of large quantities of energy (up to of order 1040 erg) on time scales as short as a fraction of a second involve plasma heating and particle acceleration in superstrong magnetic fields H (of order 1012 G). These transient events are interesting from a theoretical standpoint because they require knowledge of particle transport properties in low-density plasmas (εe ≲ 1025 cm−3) threaded by both electric (E) and magnetic fields. The evaluation of matrix elements involving solutions to the Dirac equation for such a field configuration is often difficult and sometimes impossible, since no completely normalized wave function has yet been found. Here it is shown that, in the special case of E/H ≲ 10−4, a simplification of the overlap integrals permits an analytical integration that yields explicit expressions for the relativistic charge currents needed in the computation of the anisotropic conductivity tensor when E.H ≠ 0. The application of these results to the evaluation of the conductivity is briefly discussed. Among other things, this work is relevant to a theory of resistive magnetic tearing instabilities in a quantizing field.

Within the framework of studies of the stability of magneto-plasmas to non-ideal modes, such as resistive modes, the problem of determining the asymptotic matching data arising from the outer (ideal) region is considered. Modes possessing both tearing and interchange (ballooning) parity are considered in finite-pressure plasmas. The matching data, which form a matrix whose elements represent the small solution response to forcing by a big solution, are shown to derive from a variational (energy) principle. The variational principle, as presented, applies to both cylindrical and two-dimensional (toroidal) geometries. Allowing for the presence of multiple rational surfaces, a reciprocity relation between off-diagonal elements of the matching data matrix is obtained. The variational principle is suitable for numerical approximation, and, in particular, for the finite-element method, for which convergence rates are estimated. By packing nodes near the rational surface, maximum convergence, proportional to the inverse square of the number of mesh nodes for tent functions, is achieved.

The classical incompressible MHD or cold plasma phase mixing problem, which involves Alfvén or plasma waves in inhornogeneous media, is re-examined using a spatial Fourier series rather than the usual temporal Fourier or Laplace transform approach. A number of exact and near-exact analytic and numerical results are derived which reveal an attractive picture of energy cascading to smaller length-scales in a manner reminiscent of turbulence. Furthermore, we present a simple and unambiguous description of how a surface wave arises in the limit in which the inhomogeneity becomes a discontinuity.

There exist plasma waves that transport helicity although they do not propagate electromagnetic energy. The dispersion relations of such helicity waves are studied. The electric field of the waves is parallel to the perturbed magnetic field, and both are perpendicular to the perturbed current. In cross-field propagation, a helicity wave is decomposed into two transverse modes with different polarizations and a longitudinal part. The helicity waves are principally Alfvénic in the low-frequency limit. At high frequencies, the Faraday effect comes into the polarization.