On the wave amplitude blow-up in the Berk–Breizman model for nonlinear evolution of a plasma wave driven resonantly by fast ions

Journal article, 2011

In this paper the Berk–Breizman (BB) model of plasma wave instability arising on the stability threshold is considered. An interesting although physically unacceptable feature of the model is the explosive behaviour occurring in the regime of small values of the collision frequency parameter. We present an analytical description of the explosive solution, based on a fitting to the numerical solution of the BB equation with the collision parameter equal to zero. We find that the chaotic behaviour taking place for small but non-zero values of the collision parameter is absent in this case; therefore, chaotic behaviour seems to be an independent phenomenon not directly related to the blow-up regime. The time and the velocity dependence of the distribution function are found numerically and plotted to better understand what actually happens in the model. It allows us to obtain a good qualitative understanding of the time evolution of the mode amplitude including the linear growth of the amplitude, reaching its maximum and then decreasing towards the zero value. Nevertheless, we have no satisfactory physical explanation of the amplitude evolution when the amplitude vanishes at some time and then revives but with an opposite phase.