Plasma emission induced by ring-distributed energetic electrons in overdense plasmas

Abstract

According to the standard scenario of plasma emission, escaping radiations are generated by the nonlinear development of the kinetic bump-on-tail instability driven by a single beam of energetic electrons interacting with plasmas. Here we conduct fully-kinetic electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations to investigate plasma emission induced by the ring-distributed energetic electrons interacting with overdense plasmas. Efficient excitations of the fundamental (F) and harmonic (H) emissions are revealed with radiation mechanism(s) different from the standard scenario: (1) The primary modes accounting for the radiations are generated through the electron cyclotron maser instability (for the upper-hybrid (UH) and Z modes) and the thermal anisotropic instability (for the whistler (W) mode); the F emission is generated by the nonlinear coupling of the Z and W modes and the H emission by the nonlinear coupling of the UH modes. This presents an alternative mechanism of coherent radiation in overdense plasmas.