Resonant and nonresonant excitation of waves in a planar magnetosonic flow

Abstract

Forced propagation of perturbations in a magnetosonic wave are considered. The driving force may be caused by stimulated Mandelstam–Brillouin scattering of optic waves or by intense magnetosonic exciter. Some heating-cooling function which takes into account radiative cooling and unspecified heating is taken into consideration, as well as nonlinearity of a medium. Both these factors make the excitation particular. The analytical and numerical evaluations reveal that forced oscillations differ essentially from the free propagation and depend on a number of dimensionless parameters such as the ratio of speed of exciter to the eigen speed of excited wave, the ratio of speed of an excited wave to its eigen speed, and the dimensionless magnitude of an exciter. Forced excitation is resonant if speed of an exciter coincides with the eigen speed of excited wave but may give rise to the excited perturbations with the speed different from the eigen one. The preliminary evaluations may be helpful for the controlled excitation of perturbations in natural and laboratory plasma systems and indication of the parameters of an exciter.