A model of beam–plasma discharge in a nonuniform plasma

Abstract

This paper presents a model of beam–plasma discharge resulting from the quasilinear heating of plasma electrons by Langmuir waves which are excited by beam–plasma interactions. The heating is made possible by the spectral transformation of waves propagating radially from the central beam-occupied region toward the region of lower plasma density. In this paper equations describing the wave spectral density, the distribution function of a high-energy electron tail, and its stationary density profile are obtained and numerically solved; to do so a balanced diffusion and ionization is assumed. The possibility of significant plasma density enhancement in beam–plasma discharge is demonstrated.