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Ionization instability by energized electrons in weakly ionized unmagnetized plasmas

Phys. Plasmas 11, 1955 (2004); doi:10.1063/1.1705651

Published 14 April 2004

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L. Conde
Departamento de Física Aplicada, E.T.S.I. Aeronáuticos University Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
A fluid model for an ionization instability in weakly ionized and non magnetized plasmas is presented. The equilibrium state is assumed to exist in a plasma where additional ionizations are produced by an energized electron group Jeb, considered as monoenergetic, with energy exceeding the ionization threshold of the neutral gas. Ionization by thermal electrons and all charge losses are contemplated and the Poisson equation relates the plasma potential fluctuations with electric charge densities. The leading role of elastic collisions between ions and neutral atoms is evidenced and determines the characteristic time and length scales. The instability requires a minimum suprathermal electron current density Jeb within a narrow energy range. According to the magnitude of this current, two different growth modes are possible separated by a bifurcation point. There is aperiodic exponential growth for low wave numbers and an increasing amplitude plasma wave from the bifurcation up to a maximum wave number. This latter feature determines the characteristic length for electric charge fluctuations. The quasineutral approximation recovers the exponential growth modes but fails to predict this maximum wave number for the oscillatory growth rate. ©2004 American Institute of Physics.
History: Received 8 August 2003; accepted 20 February 2004; published 14 April 2004
Permalink: http://link.aip.org/link/?PHPAEN/11/1955/1
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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords
PACS
  • 52.20.Hv
    Atomic, molecular, ion, and heavy-particle collisions in plasma
  • 52.25.Gj
    Plasma fluctuation and chaos phenomena
  • 52.35.Qz
    Plasma microinstabilities including ion-acoustic, two-stream, loss-cone, beam-plasma, drift, ion- or electron-cyclotron instabilities, etc
  • 52.35.Fp
    Plasma electrostatic waves and oscillations e.g., ion-acoustic waves
  • 52.25.Fi
    Plasma transport properties
  • 52.65.Kj
    Magnetohydrodynamic and fluid equation (plasma simulation)
  • YEAR: 2004

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PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN:
1070-664X (print)   1089-7674 (online)
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REFERENCES (11)
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