NONLINEAR-WAVE INTERACTIONS IN 2-ELECTRON-TEMPERATURE PLASMAS

Dynamical equations are derived for the evolution of weakly nonlinear electron plasma waves when the electron distributions are characterized by more than one temperature component. The presence of electron-acoustic modes in multi-temperature plasmas opens a new decay channel. By considering an explicit example, it is demonstrated that these distributions imply significant modifications of the standard models for the decay spectrum of electron plasma waves. In particular, long-wavelength Langmuir waves can decay to shorter wavelengths. The results can have implications for ionospheric heating experiments.