The ion-acoustic instability of the inductively coupled plasma driven by the ponderomotive electron current formed in the skin layer

The stability theory of the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) is developed for the case when the electron quiver velocity in RF wave is of the order of or is larger than the electron thermal velocity. The theory predicts the existence the instabilities of the ICP which are driven by the current formed in the skin layer by the accelerated electrons, which move relative ions under the action of the ponderomotive force.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2001.0082

The nonmodal kinetic theory for the electrostatic instabilities of a plasma with a sheared Hall current

The kinetic theory for the instabilities driven by the Hall current with a sheared current velocity, which has the method of the shearing modes or the so-called non-modal approach as its foundation, is developed. The developed theory predicts that in the Hall plasma with the inhomogeneous electric field, the separate spatial Fourier mode of the perturbations is determined in the frame convected with one of the plasma components. Because of the different shearing of the ion and electron flows in the Hall plasma, this mode is perceived by the second component as the Doppler-shifted continuously sheared mode with time-dependent wave numbers. Due to this effect, the interaction of the plasma components forms the nonmodal time-dependent process, which should be investigated as the initial value problem. The developed approach is applied to the solutions of the linear initial value problems for the hydrodynamic modified two-stream instability and the kinetic ion-sound instability of the plasma with a sheared Hall current with a uniform velocity shear. These solutions reveal that the uniform part of the current velocity is responsible for the modal evolution of the instability, whereas the current velocity shear is the source of the development of the nonmodal instability with exponent growing with time as $\sim\left(t-t_0\right)^3$.Comment: 20 page

Renormalized non-modal theory of the kinetic drift instability of plasma shear flows

The linear and renormalized nonlinear kinetic theory of drift instability of plasma shear flow across the magnetic field, which has the Kelvin's method of shearing modes or so-called non-modal approach as its foundation, is developed. The developed theory proves that the time-dependent effect of the finite ion Larmor radius is the key effect, which is responsible for the suppression of drift turbulence in an inhomogeneous electric field. This effect leads to the non-modal decrease of the frequency and growth rate of the unstable drift perturbations with time. We find that turbulent scattering of the ion gyrophase is the dominant effect, which determines extremely rapid suppression of drift turbulence in shear flow