Electrostatic waves and instabilities in multispecies nonneutral plasmas

This paper briefly describes waves and instabilities in a multispecies nonneutral plasma that have previously been studied only in neutral plasmas: ion sound waves, drift waves, and ion temperature gradient waves. The theory of their dispersion relations and growth rates is similar to that for neutral plasmas, but results differ in several important respects. For instance, drift waves are not necessarily unstable, the instabilities generally do not cause plasma loss, and they can be controlled e.g., turned on or off by manipulation of density and temperature profiles using standard experimental techniques such as centrifugal separation and laser cooling/heating. This should allow precise experimental studies of instability growth and saturation. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3518765