Suppression of the current instability by decay processes

A study is made of the instability of lower hybrid waves in an isothermal m agnetized current-carrying plasma. It is assumed that the dynamic suppressi on of the current instability is associated with the excitation of a quasi- monochromatic wave near the instability threshold and its subsequent decay into two strongly damped lower hybrid waves. It is shown that the decay pro cess results in the onset of either a quasi-periodic or stochastic nonlinea r stabilization regime involving a small number of modes. The anomalous res istance is estimated. (C) 2001 MAN "Nauka/Interperiodica".