Comparison of wave propagation in the stationary and moving plasma: motion and wave propagation along the magnetic field

Abstract

The three important aspects of wave propagation in a stationary and a moving plasma (namely frequency, polarization and dispersion) are compared, taking the phase refractive index of the wave as the independent variable. Wave propagation and the motion of the plasma are taken to be along the magnetic field. The plasma is assumed to consist of one species only, and the effect of collisions is neglected. Wave propagation in a moving plasma has been shown to possess several important features, such as the absence of cyclotron resonance, reversal of the sense of polarization when the phase velocity becomes equal to the plasma velocity, and the existence of backward waves for very small and very large phase velocities.