Dispersion and spectral characteristics of crossfield instability in collisional magnetoplasma

Abstract

Results on dispersion and spectral characteristics of crossfield instability in a collisional magnetoplasma are presented for different values of externally applied radial electric field. The dispersion relation obtained experimentally differs significantly from predictions of linear theory for strong electric fields.K-spectra for density and potential fluctuations follow power law with indices (−3·7 ± 0·5) and (−5·6 ± 0·6) respectively.

At large values of applied electric fields, the main crossfield modes appear to give rise to a number of other modes possibly through non-linear wave-wave interactions. Large amplitudem = 2 mode displays strong sidebands indicating particle trapping by the non-linear waves. Non-linear wave-wave and wave particle interactions, thus, appear to play at important role in the saturation of the cross field instability.