Cooling of a pure electron plasma by cyclotron radiation
Abstract
It has been suggested that a magnetically confined pure electron plasma might be cooled to the liquid and crystal states. Here, cyclotron radiation is considered as a possible cooling mechanism. The plasma and some cooled resisting medium are assumed to reside inside a conducting cavity. When the cyclotron motion of the electrons resonantly drives a cavity mode which is damped by the cooled medium, energy is transferred from the electrons to the medium. Attention is focused on the case where all of the electrons experience a sharp (i.e., high-Q) resonance with a single cavity mode. An interesting result is that the rate of energy loss per electron can exceed, by a factor of Q, the radiation rate for an electron executing cyclotron motion in unbounded space. The maximum value of Q is limited by cyclotron damping of the mode on the plasma itself and can be large for a non-neutral plasma at a density well below the Brillouin limit (i.e., for ωp<<Ω, where ωp is the plasma frequency and Ω is the cyclotron frequency).
- Publication:
-
Physics of Fluids
- Pub Date:
- April 1980
- DOI:
- 10.1063/1.863044
- Bibcode:
- 1980PhFl...23..725O
- Keywords:
-
- Cyclotron Radiation;
- Electron Plasma;
- Magnetic Control;
- Plasma Control;
- Plasma Temperature;
- Radiant Cooling;
- Energy Dissipation;
- Magnetic Field Configurations;
- Plasma Resonance;
- Q Factors;
- Plasma Physics