On the Nonlinear Electron Vibrations in a Plasma

Abstract

Many applications, including the control of parametric instabilities detrimental for inertial confinement fusion, which motivates the present work, require an accurate kinetic description of the electron vibrations in a plasma, henceforth called electron plasma waves. This issue actually gave rise to a countless number of papers, even beyond the plasma physics community, due to some fascinating effects like Landau damping, which is the most famous example of collisionless dissipation. However, very few theoretical results are available when the wave is so intense that it deeply traps a significant fraction of the electrons in its potential, and these results are mostly restricted to academic situations. By contrast, in this chapter we provide a description of nearly monochromatic electron plasma waves valid from the linear to the strongly nonlinear regime, using hypotheses general enough to address a real physics situation like stimulated Raman scattering in a fusion plasma. Completely new theoretical results are obtained regarding the collisionless dissipation and the dispersion relation of an electron plasma wave, whose accuracy was tested against very careful kinetic simulations of stimulated Raman scattering.