Evolution of FMS and Alfven waves produced by the initial disturbance in the FMS waveguide

Abstract

AbstractA description of the evolution of the initial disturbance in the fast magnetosonic (FMS) waveguide in transversely inhomogeneous plasma, given a weak coupling between FMS and Alfven modes, is made. It is shown that the Fourier transform of the FMS waveguide disturbance with respect to the coordinates along which plasma is homogeneous can be presented as a superposition of collective modes of the leading approximation with respect to the weak FMS–Alfven wave coupling from the initial instant of time. Frequencies of such collective modes and dependence of their structures on the coordinate along the inhomogeneity are found without taking the FMS–Alfven resonance into consideration, and the mode decrements are calculated using the perturbation technique. On the basis of such a representation of the FMS waveguide disturbance, the evolution of Alfven waves generating with waveguide mode packets produced by the initial disturbance of an arbitrary longitudinal structure is described. It is shown that the longitudinal structure of the Alfven disturbance generated by the collective mode packet is determined by the ratio between longitudinal scales of the initial disturbance and scales specified by resonance conditions (the resonance longitudinal wave number and the width of the range of the resonance longitudinal wave numbers). The structures of Alfven disturbances for the cases of such different ratios are described.