Convective laser filamentation instability in magnetized plasma

Abstract

The convective amplification of filamentation instability (FI) of electromagnetic waves traveling along the density ramp of a magnetized plasma is investigated. The generalized amplification factor of the instability in the presence of a DC–magnetic field is derived by obtaining the governing equations of the instability and using the slow-coupling technique to obtain an analytical expression for the amplification factor in weakly magnetized plasma. The result shows enhancement of the convective FI gain by the magnetic field, where the enhancement is stronger for lower equilibrium plasma density values.