2024/09/06 by Emanuele Sobacchi, Masanori Iwamoto, Sobacchi, Emanuele +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Plasma Diagnostics and Applications #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.04127
openalex publication_date 2024/09/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the propagation of electromagnetic waves in tenuous plasmas, where the wave frequency, ω0, is much larger than the plasma frequency, ω\rm P. We show that in pair plasmas nonlinear effects are weak for a0 ≪ ω0/ω\rm P, where a0 is the wave strength parameter. In electron-proton plasmas a more restrictive condition must be satisfied, namely either a0≪ 1/ω\rm Pτ0, where τ0 is the duration of the radiation pulse, or a0≪ 1. We derive the equations that govern the evolution of the pulse in the weakly nonlinear regime. Our results have important implications for the modeling of fast radio bursts. We argue that: (i) Millisecond duration bursts with a smooth profile must be produced in a proton-free environment, where nonlinear effects are weaker. (ii) Propagation through an electron-proton plasma near the source can imprint a sub-microsecond variability on the burst profile.