Locally excited magnethohydrodynamic waves in a uniform cylindrical plasma waveguide

Abstract

The guided modes of Woods' magnetohydrodynamic waveguide for a uniform, cylindrical plasma are shown to satisfy a homogeneous wave equation whose differential operator is the product of eight Helmholtz operators. The propagation constants of the Helmholtz operators are the characteristic roots of an 8 × 8 matrix which is derived and written down explicitly. This reformulated theory is extended to include localized sources which excite the guided modes. For certain cases, the Green's functions for the differential operators can be represented by Dini expansions in terms of modal eigenfunctions, which manifestly satisfy the boundary conditions. For the case of MHD waves excited by an azimuthally symmetric current source in a resistive, pressureless, inviscid, fully ionized plasma, a detailed solution is obtained which is in good qualitative agreement with experiments.