Theory of Plasma Oscillations. B. Excitation and Damping of Oscillations

The theory of electron oscillations of an unbounded plasma is extended to take into account the effects of collisions and special groups of particles having well-defined ranges of velocities. It is found that as a result of collisions a wave tends to be damped in a time of the order of the mean time between collisions. If beams of sharply defined velocity or groups of particles far above mean thermal speeds are present, however, they introduce a tendency toward instability so that small oscillations grow until limited by effects not taken into account in the linear approximation. An estimate is made of the steady-state amplitude for plasma oscillations in which excitation occurs because of a peak at high velocities in the electron velocity distribution, and in which the main damping arises from collisions. It is also found that in variable density plasmas, waves moving in the direction of decreasing plasma density show even stronger instability.

In absence of plasma oscillations, any beam of well-defined velocity is scattered by the individual plasma electrons acting at random, but, when all particles act in unison in the form of a plasma oscillation, the scattering can become much greater. Because of the instability of the plasma when special beams are present, the beams are scattered by the oscillations which they produce. It is suggested that this type of instability can explain the results of Langmuir, which show that beams of electrons traversing a plasma are scattered much more rapidly than can be accounted for by random collisions alone. It is also suggested that this type of instability may be responsible for radio noises received from the sun's atmosphere and from interstellar space.