Nonlinear skin effect in a collisionless plasma

Abstract

The skin effect in a warm collisionless plasma is studied via one-dimensional advective particle-in-cell simulations. It is found that the skin depth exhibits nonlinear behavior at low frequencies. A simple model describing the nonlinear behavior of the skin depth is proposed and shown to match the results of the simulations well. The transitions between local, anomalous, and nonlinear skin effect regimes are investigated in the parameter space of wave frequency and amplitude.