An experimental study of plasma waves generated by co-linear optical mixing

Longitudinal plasma waves produced by the resonant beating of two transverse electromagnetic waves are of interest for several reasons. First, it has been predicted theoretically and demonstrated in simulations that the exceedingly large electric field of such a wave may be used to accelerate particles to high energies. Secondly, because the plasma wave necessarily obeys the plasma dispersion relation, it may serve as a versatile and accurate plasma density probe. Furthermore, several schemes have been proposed locally heat plasmas using the damping of these waves. The latter application is particularly relevant to the study of ionospheric plasma physics and cross-field transport. The authors present here results appropriate to all of these research avenues