Waves in a hot uniaxial plasma excited by a current source

Abstract

The fields excited by a short dipole antenna in a hot uniaxially anisotropic plasma ${\mathrm{(B}}_0\mathrm{\to \infty )}$ have been studied. When ${\mathrm{\omega <\omega }}_p$ , the dipole effectively excites two propagating waves, a slow wave and a fast wave, inside a cone of half‐cone angle ${\sin }^{\text{−1}}{\mathrm{(\omega /\omega }}_p)$ . Inside the cone a characteristic interference structure in the angular distribution of the fields is noted. Outside the cone fields fall off exponentially. The appearance of the cone and the characteristic interference structure in the field is useful from the viewpoint of laboratory diagnostics.