Excitation of Electrostatic Standing Wave in the Superposition of Two Counter Propagating Relativistic Whistler Waves

TL;DR

This paper develops a relativistic theory and simulation analysis of standing wave formation from counter-propagating whistler waves in overdense plasma, improving understanding of wave interactions relevant to fusion and plasma heating.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed relativistic theoretical model and validates it with PIC simulations, extending prior non-relativistic studies of whistler wave interactions.

Findings

Relativistic theory predicts more accurate field amplitudes.

Simulation results confirm the theory's predictions.

Findings are relevant for ion heating and inertial confinement fusion.

Abstract

The problem of standing wave formation by superposing two counter-propagating whistler waves in an overdense plasma, studied recently by Sano et al. (Phys. Rev. E 100, 053205 (2019) and Phys. Rev. E 101, 013206 (2020)), has been revisited in the relativistic limit. A detailed theory along with simulation has been performed to study the standing wave formation in the interaction of two counter propagating relativistically intense whistler waves. The relativistic theory explains such interaction process more precisely and predicts correct field amplitudes of the standing wave for a much wider range of physical parameters of the problem as compared to its non-relativistic counterpart. The analytical results are compared with 1-D Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulation results, performed using OSIRIS 4.0. The results are of relevance to ion heating and fast ignition scheme of inertial confinement fusion.