Enhancement of an Instability by Internal Feedbacks in a Plasma

The electron-ion instability is excited in counterstreaming ion beams and plasma system. The instability is a new type of standing oscillations whose wavelength is given by D/n, where D is the distance between boundaries and n is an integer. The amplitude is controlled by a difference between the velocities of the beams, which changes the phase of a feedback loop. The internal feedback is caused by a reflected wave and by a coupling between the boundaries. Temporal evolution of the instability is measured and is found to agree with numerical solutions of the Van der Pol equation including a feedback term. A measured growth rate is proportional to the square of the oscillation amplitude.