General Discussion on Accelerator Experiments in the Laboratory

Abstract

In the early 1960’s, the beam plasma discharge (BPD) had been studied in detail experimentally in the laboratory. Prior to the first electron accelerator experiment on rockets (Hess) the two-stream instability was (theoretically) predicted to be the main source of severe beam modifications. The recent laboratory experiments, however, indicate that the BPD occurs under near ionospheric plasma conditions. Most of the rocket flights with accelerators have only provided circumstantial evidence for these strong interactions. How does one explain this apparent inability to characterize a phenomenon which is extremely obvious in the laboratory, but apparently very subtle in space?