Whistler scattering from density fluctuations in magnetized plasmas

Abstract
Scattering of a coherent whistler from random density fluctuations is treated by a perturbation procedure. The attenuation length is calculated for scattering by a drift-wave type fluctuation model and is simply expressed as a function of the propagation angle in the limit where the whistler wavelength is long compared to a correlation length. For typical tokamak and space plasmas, this scattering becomes most important at larger angles.