Radiation by Plasma Waves in a Homogeneous Plasma

Abstract

Two mechanisms of the radiation in a homogeneous plasma with no magnetic field are considered. The one is due to the interaction between a longitudinal plasma wave and the mass fluctuations in the plasma, which relates mainly to ion thermal fluctuations. The other is caused by the scattering of a plasma wave on the charge fluctuations connected with electron plasma oscillations. Under some approximations, the coupled set of Boltzmann-Vlasov and Maxwell equations are solved. The radiation intensities are expressed in the correlation coefficients of mass fluctuation or charge fluctuation for respective mechanisms. The angular distribution and frequency spectra are briefly discussed. The results are compared with those of previous authors. For the mechanism due to the plasma wave-mass fluctuation interactions, our results are in agreement with others, while, for the mechanism due to the plasma-plasma wave interactions, the radiation intensity is found to be less by the factor (vph/c)2 than that of the Ginzburg and Zhelezniakov theory, which is calculated in the heuristic way on the analogy of electromagnetic (transverse) wave-plasma wave interaction.