Harmonic Langmuir waves. II. Turbulence spectrum

Abstract

The Langmuir wave turbulence generated by a beam–plasma interaction has been studied since the early days of plasma physics research. In particular, mechanisms which lead to the quasi-power-law spectrum for Langmuir waves have been investigated, since such a spectrum defines the turbulence characteristics. Meanwhile, the generation of harmonic Langmuir modes during the beam–plasma interaction has been known for quite some time, and yet has not been satisfactorily accounted for thus far. In paper I of this series, nonlinear dispersion relations for these harmonics have been derived. In this paper (paper II), generalized weak turbulence theory which includes multiharmonic Langmuir modes is formulated and the self-consistent particle and wave kinetic equations are solved. The result shows that harmonic Langmuir mode spectra can indeed exhibit a quasi-power-law feature, implying multiscale structure in both frequency and wave number space spanning several orders of magnitude.