Observation of the reactive component of Langmuir wave phased-bunched electrons

Abstract

Observations from a new wave-particle correlator show clear evidence of phase bunching of the electrons by a monochromatic Langmuir wave electric field which varied slowly in amplitude. The electrons are found to be bunched at 90° with respect to the wave field indicating that they are the reactive component of the perturbed distribution function. This is in agreement with theory that predicts this phase relation for the transit of electrons through a very long wave field. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.