On Landau Damping
- 1 July 1961
- journal article
- conference paper
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics of Fluids
- Vol. 4 (7) , 869-874
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1706419
Abstract
The problem of Landau damping of longitudinal plasma oscillations is investigated by dividing the plasma electrons into two groups. The first group is the main plasma and consists of all electrons with velocities considerably different from the wave velocity while the second group, the resonant electrons, consists of all electrons with velocities near the wave velocity. It is assumed that initially the main plasma has a wave on it while the resonant particles are undisturbed. It is shown that equating the gain in energy of the resonant particles to the loss in energy of the wave gives the correct Landau damping. Only first-order quantities are used in the analysis so that particle trapping which is a nonlinear effect is not involved. The validity of arguments which attribute Landau damping to particle trapping is discussed. The breakdown of the linearized theory and the Galilean invariance of the damping are also investigated.Keywords
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