Longitudinal wave-breaking limits in a unified geometric model of relativistic warm plasmas - Physics > Plasma Physics

Abstract: The covariant Vlasov-Maxwell system is used to study breaking of relativisticwarm plasma waves. The well-known theory of relativistic warm plasmas due toKatsouleas and Mori KM is subsumed within a unified geometric formulation ofthe `waterbag- paradigm over spacetime. We calculate the maximum amplitude$E \text{max}$ of non-linear longitudinal electric waves for a particular classof waterbags whose geometry is a simple 3-dimensional generalization invelocity of the 1-dimensional KM waterbag in velocity. It is well known thatthe value of $\lim {v\to c}E \text{max}$ with the effective temperature of theplasma electrons held fixed diverges for the KM model; however, we show that acertain class of simple 3-dimensional waterbags yields a finite value for$\lim {v\to c}E \text{max}$, where $v$ is the phase velocity of the wave and$c$ is the speed of light.

Author: D. A. Burton, A. Noble

Source: https://arxiv.org/