High-Frequency Driven Ion-Cyclotron Instability

Abstract
The mechanism of the high-frequency driven ion-cyclotron instability is investigated and shown, for a Q-machine plasma column with symmetric external excitation, to correspond to a three-wave resonant process in which an electron-plasma wave decays into an electrostatic ion-cyclotron wave and an oppositely propagating electron-plasma wave, all waves being in their lowest-order mode.