arXiv · nlin/0207050
Landau damping of partially incoherent Langmuir waves
Abstract
It is shown that partial incoherence, in the form of stochastic phase noise, of a Langmuir wave in an unmagnetized plasma gives rise to a Landau-type damping. Starting from the Zakharov equations, which describe the nonlinear interaction between Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves, a kinetic equation is derived for the plasmons by introducing the Wigner-Moyal transform of the complex Langmuir wave field. This equation is then used to analyze the stability properties of small perturbations on a stationary solution consisting of a constant amplitude wave with stochastic phase noise. The concomitant dispersion relation exhibits the phenomenon of Landau-like damping. However, this damping differs from the classical Landau damping in which a Langmuir wave, interacting with the plasma electrons, loses energy. In the present process, the damping is non-dissipative and is caused by the resonant interaction between an instantaneously-produced disturbance, due to the parametric interactions, and a partially incoherent Langmuir wave, which can be considered as a quasi-particle composed of an ensemble of partially incoherent plasmons.
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R. Fedele, P. K. Shukla, M. Onorato, D. Anderson, M. Lisak. 2002-07-26. Landau damping of partially incoherent Langmuir waves. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0375-9601(02)01201-x
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