Statistical analysis of nonlinear wave interactions in simulated Langmuir turbulence data

Abstract

We present a statistical analysis of strong turbulence of Langmuir and ion-sound waves resulting from beam-plasma interaction. The analysis is carried out on data sets produced by a numerical simulation of one-dimensional Zakharov’s equations. The nonlinear wave interactions are studied using two different approaches: high-order spectra and Volterra models. These methods were applied to identify two and three wave processes in the data, and the Volterra model was furthermore employed to evaluate the direction and magnitude of energy transfer between the wave modes in the case of Langmuir wave decay. We demonstrate that these methods allow one to determine the relative importance of strongly and weakly turbulent processes. The statistical validity of the results was thoroughly tested using surrogated data set analysis.Key words. Space plasma physics (wave-wave interactions; experimental and mathematical techniques; nonlinear phenomena)