Decay of magnetic-electron-drift vortex modes in plasmas

Abstract

It is shown that the magnetic-electron-drift vortex wave can parametrically decay into a daughter wave and an ion-acoustic wave in a nonuniform unmagnetized plasma. From the fluid and Maxwell equations, a pair of coupled nonlinear equations is derived. A normal-mode analysis leads to the nonlinear dispersion relation which governs the decay and modulational instabilities. The growth rate of the decay interaction is presented.