Mechanical model for the plasma maser effect - art. no. 067401

A Fermi-like pinball model is proposed for the nonlinear plasma maser effec t, or turbulent bremsstrahlung, in the nonlinear interaction of plasma part icles and waves. The model consists of a system of many noninteracting part icles bouncing elastically between two oscillating walls. The walls act as energy and momentum sources and sinks for the particles, analogous to the w ave fields in a weakly turbulent plasma. The oscillation amplitudes and fre quencies of the walls determine the dynamics and distribution of the partic les. The resulting. asymptotic velocity distributions agree qualitatively w ith existing weak turbulence theories. It is also found that the second wal l, which simulates the effect of the nonresonant wave-particle interaction, can destroy correlations in the particle dynamics and lead to the formatio n of a high-energy tail in the velocity distribution.