Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Comparison Of Full-Wave And Ray-Tracing Analysis Of Mode Conversion In Plasmas, Yanli Xiao

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation reports on the first direct comparison between the results of ray-based and full-wave calculations for mode conversion in plasma. This study was motivated by the modular method originally developed by Ye and Kaufman to treat a magnetosonic wave crossing a cold minority-ion gyroresonance layer. We start with the cold plasma fluid model and introduce a system of evolution equations for electrons and two ion species: deuterium and hydrogen. We first study this system of equations for uniform plasma by Fourier methods, which gives the dispersion relations. We discuss how the traditional approach---which eliminates all other dynamical variables in …