We present a further investigation into the increased ionization observed in element charge states in the fast solar wind compared to its coronal hole source regions. Once ions begin to be perpendicularly heated by ion cyclotron waves and execute large gyro-orbits, density gradients in the flow can excite lower hybrid waves that then damp by heating electrons in the parallel direction. We give ...

[1] We present a theoretical and numerical study of linear mode conversion of lower hybrid waves interacting with short-scale density striations in the Earth’s ionosphere. The efficiency of the conversion process is investigated for different sets of parameters such as the angle of incidence, the wavelength of the lower hybrid wave, and the size of the striation. It is found that the most effic...

The theory of lower hybrid LH waves trapped in striations in warm ionospheric plasma in the three-dimensional case is presented. A specific mechanism of trapping associated with the linear transformation of waves is discussed. It is shown analytically that such trapping can take place in elongated plasma depletions with the frequencies below and above the lower hybrid resonance frequency of the...

We perform a numerical study on the quasilinear relaxation of an electron cyclotron maser on the initially dominant mode. We focus thereby on a situation where the initially dominant modes are quasi-electrostatic lower hybrid (lh) waves, which have not been treated in preceding studies. To this end, we chose 0.2 ≤ ωp/ωBe < 0.5 (ωp: plasma-, ωBe: electron cyclotron frequency) and an initial loss...

We consider the role that the lower-hybrid wave turbulence plays in providing the necessary resistivity at collisionless reconnection sights. The mechanism for generating the waves is considered to be the lower-hybrid drift instability. We find that the level of the wave amplitude is sufficient enough to heat and accelerate both electrons and ions.

The introduction of an electronegative gas (i.e., a gas with a large electron attachment cross section, e.g., SF6) into a plasma has made it possible to study plasmas in which the negative ion density can be much larger than the electron density. lp2 In such a plasma, new phenomena may be expected to occur, in particular, various electrostatic wave modes are modified by the presence of negative...

The possibility of using lower hybrid (LH) waves as a source of localized current for the control of MHD instabilities is investigated. A toroidal ray tracing code is used to define the requirements on the launched wave spectrum, in order to drive currents mostly localized inside the magnetic islands. Issues such as the radial diffusion of the non-inductive current, the impact of the radial pro...

Recent experiments on the spherical tokamak have discovered the conditions to create a powerful plasma and ensure easy shaping and amplification of stability, high bootstrap current and confinement energy. The spherical tours (ST) fusion energy development path is complementary to the tokamak burning plasma experiment such as NSTX and higher toroidal beta regimes and improves the design of a po...