Renormalized Compton scattering and nonlinear damping of collisionless drift waves

A kinetic theory for the nonlinear damping of collisionless drift waves in a shear-free magnetic field is presented. The general formalism is a renormalized version of induced scattering on the ions and reduces correctly to weak turbulence theory. The approximation studied explicitly reduces to Compton scattering, systematizes thee earlier calculations of Dupree and Tetreault (DT) [Phys. Fluids 21, 425 (1978)], and extends that theory to finite ion gyroradius. Certain conclusions differ significantly from those of DT