Understand
Intense radiation field can modify plasma properties, the corresponding refractive index, and lead to such nonlinear propagation effects as self-focusing.
- We estimate the corresponding effects in pair plasma, both in unmagnetized and strongly magnetically dominated case.
- First, in the unmagnetized pair plasma the ponderomotive force does not lead to charge separation, but to density depletion.
- Second, for astrophysically relevant plasmas of pulsar magnetospheres, (and possible loci of Fast Radio Bursts), where cyclotron frequency $\omega_B$ dominates over plasma frequency $\omega_p$ and the frequency of the electromagnetic wave, $\omega_B \gg \omega_p,\, \omega$, we show that (i) there is virtually no nonlinearity due to changing effective mass in the field of the wave; (ii) ponderomotive force is $F_p^{(B)} =- {m_e c^2}/({4 B_0^2}) \nabla E^2$; it is reduced by a factor $(\omega/\omega_B)^2$ if compared to the unmagnetized case ($B_0$ is the external magnetic field and $E$ is the electric field of the wave); (iii) for radiation beam propagating along constant magnetic field in pair plasma with density $n_\pm$, the ponderomotive force leads to appearance of circular currents that lead to the decrease of the field within the beam by a factor $\Delta B/B_0 = 2\pi n_\pm m_e c^2 {E^2}/{B_0^4}$.