Scattering of Electrostatic Waves by Inhomogeneities in a Plasma

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Abstract
A plane wave excited in an infinite uniform plasma preserves its identity but a similar wave set up in an inhomogeneous plasma will change in the course of time. If the inhomogeneities are weak, one may analyze the excitation at any instant into plane waves, the normal modes of the homogenized plasma. The effect of inhomogeneities is to distribute the energy of a single initial plane wave among a spectrum of waves. By studying the time‐development of this process, one can assign an equivalent damping coefficient. There is discussion of the possibility that inhomogeneities may, in this way, suppress an instability, such as two‐stream instability.

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