Propagation of compressional and torsional Alfven waves under identical plasma conditions

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Abstract
Though many authors have separately studied torsional and compressional Alfven waves, no measurements made on both waves for the same plasma conditions have been reported. This paper presents such measurements for several different sets of plasma conditions. For each set of conditions, velocity and attenuation measurements were made for each wave and by comparing with theoretical curves, the values of the various parameters determining the wave propagation were obtained. The compressional and torsional wave measurements gave independent estimates of the parameters. The two sets of parameters show a broad agreement which is particularly significant since de-coupling of the ions from the neutrals is taking place over the frequency range for which the measurements were made. The torsional wave measurements do, however, imply a higher total density and lower percentage ionization than the compressional wave measurements. The existence of this difference implies that non-uniformity of the radial density distribution is affecting the wave propagation.

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