Laboratory measurements of electrostatic solitary structures generated by electron beam injection

Electrostatic solitary structures are generated by injection of a suprathermal electron beam parallel to the magnetic field in a laboratory plasma. Electric microprobes with tips smaller than the Debye length (\(\lambda_{De}\)) enabled the measurement of positive potential pulses with half-widths 4...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2010-09
Main Authors: Lefebvre, Bertrand, Li-Jen, Chen, Gekelman, Walter, Kintner, Paul, Pickett, Jolene, Pribyl, Patrick, Vincena, Stephen, Chiang, Franklin, Jack, Judy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beam injection
Debye length
Electron beams
Field aligned currents
Laboratories
Stability
Wave packets
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Electrostatic solitary structures are generated by injection of a suprathermal electron beam parallel to the magnetic field in a laboratory plasma. Electric microprobes with tips smaller than the Debye length (\(\lambda_{De}\)) enabled the measurement of positive potential pulses with half-widths 4 to 25\(\lambda_{De}\) and velocities 1 to 3 times the background electron thermal speed. Nonlinear wave packets of similar velocities and scales are also observed, indicating that the two descend from the same mode which is consistent with the electrostatic whistler mode and result from an instability likely to be driven by field-aligned currents.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1009.4617