Plane-polarized helicon waves

Abstract

By suitably adding right-and left-hand circularly polarized helicon waves in a cylinder, it is possible, in principle, to form linearly polarized modes, contrary to the notion that whistler waves must be circularly polarized. The planepolarized component is accompanied by a left-hand circularly polarized component which vanishes on axis but becomes important at large radii. The field lines of these two components and the energy deposition profile are computed for an illustrative case.

New properties of whistler modes

“…Here we will show that interference produces linearly polarized whistler modes. Although predicted theoretically [ Chen , ; Lundin and Krafft , ] this has not been confirmed experimentally.…”

Electron magneto-hydrodynamic waves bounded by magnetic bubble

“…This makes plane polarized modes to be generally inaccessible in the cases of conventional conducting or dielectric physical boundaries. 14 In this aspect, we like to point out that the possible role of a magnetic boundary, as detected in the present set up, in allowing the two constituent modes to coexist with different radial boundaries is an interesting effect which needs to be explored in further detail.…”

“…The findings show transition of the EMHD wave from a right handed whistler wave to a left handed helicon like mode up on switching from a uniform ambient field set up to the magnetic bubble like configuration. The change of polarization is observed to be gradual, which further revealed additional implications of the ambient magnetic field configuration, to the accessibility of-usually hard to excite-plane polarized helicon waves, 14 constituted by a superposition of right handed and left handed circularly polarized helicon modes. The observed transition of the wave polarization from right to left is accompanied by a drastic change in dispersion properties of the excited waves that confirms the excitation of radially localized helicon like waves.…”