THE ABSORPTION MECHANISMS OF WHISTLER WAVES IN COOL, DENSE, CYLINDRICALLY BOUNDED PLASMAS

It can be shown that whistler waves with low parallel phase velocity c an be subject to strong cyclotron damping, even when the wave frequenc y is well below the cyclotron frequency. This resonance arises as a re sult of the Doppler effect which is proportional to the plasma density and increases the frequency experienced by electrons moving in the op posite direction to the wave. In this paper the dispersion relation of whistler waves in a cylindrically bounded plasma is obtained and then solved. This geometry is desirable for its relevance to experiment an d also for comparison with theoretical results by other authors. In ad dition to cyclotron damping, Landau damping as well as electron-ion, e lectron-electron, and electron-neutral collisions are all included thu s enabling the relative importance of these damping mechanisms to be e valuated. The dispersion relation that is obtained is used to explore the transition from Landau dominated damping to cyclotron dominated da mping.