Effect of Small-scale Inhomogeneities on the Dispersive Properties of a Plasma

Abstract

A theory is developed to describe the effect of small·scale inhomogeneities or 'ripples' in an unmagnetised plasma on the properties of transverse waves with wavelength long compared with the scale length of the ripples. The procedure used is ased on a covariant version of nonlinear plasma kinetic theory. A simpler theory, which is more physically transparent, is explored in an appendix, and is found to reproduce the results of the more rigorous theory only in the simplest limiting cases.