Nonlinear cyclotron resonant wave-particle interaction in a nonuniform magnetic field

Quasilinear analysis of wave-particle interactions is presented for plasma flowing in a weakly nonuniform magnetic field configuration. The method presented is based an a scale separation between the length scales of quasilinear relaxation and the magnetic field inhomogeneity, allowing one to obtain large scale solutions for both particle distribution functions and wave spectra, without going into the details of the small scale quasilinear relaxation. The numerical example shows the existence of a secondary instability for an initially stable particle distribution function.