A quantitative study of scattering from electromagnetic fluctuations in plasmas

Abstract

A new compact formulation is given of the equation of transfer for a scattering system for a magnetized plasma. The formulation is based on the low temperature kinetic model and accounts for scattering from fluctuations in density, magnetic field, electric field and current. It is demonstrated that scattering from several types of fluctuations can be significant and that the relative phases of the fields scattered by these fluctuations must then be taken into account by including cross-correlations between fluctuations. It is shown that significant enhancement or cancellation of scattered power can result from cross-correlations, and that this is of practical consequence to existing microwave scattering experiments on fusion plasmas.