Sheet model description of spatio-temporal evolution of upper-hybrid oscillations in an inhomogeneous magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper analytically and numerically investigates how inhomogeneous magnetic fields cause phase mixing and wave breaking of upper hybrid oscillations in a plasma, revealing new scaling laws and implications for plasma-based particle acceleration.

Contribution

It introduces a sheet model description of the spatio-temporal evolution of upper hybrid oscillations in inhomogeneous magnetic fields, highlighting the effects of magnetic inhomogeneity on wave breaking.

Findings

Phase mixing occurs at arbitrarily low amplitudes due to magnetic inhomogeneity.

The phase mixing time scales inversely with magnetic inhomogeneity and density perturbation amplitudes.

Simulation results agree with the derived scaling laws.

Abstract

Spatio-temporal evolution of large amplitude upper hybrid oscillations in a cold homogeneous plasma in the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field is studied analytically and numerically using the Dawson sheet model. It is observed that the inhomogeneity in magnetic field which causes the upper hybrid frequency to acquire a spatial dependence, results in phase mixing and subsequent breaking of the upper hybrid oscillations at arbitrarily low amplitudes. This result is in sharp contrast to the usual upper hybrid oscillations in a homogeneous magnetic field where the oscillations break within a fraction of a period when the amplitude exceeds a certain critical value. Our perturbative calculations show that the phase mixing (wave breaking) time scales inversely with the amplitude of magnetic field inhomogeneity ($\Delta$) and amplitude of imposed density perturbation ($\delta$), and scales directly with the ratio of magnetic field inhomogeneity scale length to imposed density perturbation scale length ($(\alpha/k_L)^{-1}$ ) as $\omega_{pe}\tau_{mix} \sim \left( 1+\beta^2 \right) ^{3/2}k_L/(\beta^2\delta\Delta\alpha)$, where $\beta$ is the ratio of electron cyclotron frequency to electron plasma frequency. Further phase mixing time measured in simulations, performed using a 1-1/2 D code based on Dawson sheet model, shows good agreement with the above mentioned scaling. This result may be of relevance to plasma based particle acceleration experiments in the presence of a transverse inhomogeneous magnetic field.