Kinetic instabilities in a mirror-confined plasma sustained by high-power microwave radiation

Abstract

This paper summarizes the studies of plasma kinetic instabilities in the electron cyclotron frequency range carried out over the last decade at the Institute of Applied Physics in Nizhny Novgorod. We investigate the nonequilibrium plasma created and sustained by high-power microwave radiation of a gyrotron under the electron cyclotron resonance condition. Resonant plasma heating results in the formation of at least two electron components, one of which, more dense and cold, determines the dispersion properties of the high-frequency waves, and the other, a small group of energetic electrons with a highly anisotropic velocity distribution, is responsible for the excitation of unstable waves. Dynamic spectra and the intensity of stimulated electromagnetic emission are studied with high temporal resolution. Interpretation of observed data is based on the cyclotron maser paradigm; in this context, a laboratory modeling of non-stationary wave-particle interaction processes has much in common with similar processes occurring in the magnetosphere of Earth, planets, and solar coronal loops.