Instabilities in non-thermal plasmas

Lead Research Organisation: University of St Andrews
Department Name: Mathematics and Statistics

Abstract

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
 
Description The project has looked at a variety of plasma instabilities driven by electron beams, providing theoretical support to experimental work carried out at the University of Strathclyde. Following on from earlier work on a cyclotron maser instability relevant to auroral kilometric radiation (AKR) we have investigated the effect of a background plasma on the original instability and possible competition with the two-stream instability. More detailed work on the instability has provided explanations for some of the details of AKR. We have also carried out some work on the anomalous Doppler instability, looking at the possibility of generating it using the Strathclyde apparatus.