Mode-Coupling Saturation of the Parametric Instability and Electron Heating

Abstract

By solving the hydrodynamic equations for the parametric instability including modecoupling terms, we predict the saturation level and turbulent spectrum for the oscillating two-stream instability. Coupling the electron distribution function to the spectrum with the quasilinear diffusion coefficient gives the heating rate and high-energy tail formation. These predictions agree with the results of particle simulations.