Plasma heating by electric field compression

Abstract

Plasma heating by compression of electric fields is proposed. It is shown that periodic cycles of external compression followed by the free expansion of electric fields in the plasma cause irreversible, collisionless plasma heating and corresponding entropy generation. As a demonstration of general ideas and scalings, the heating is shown in the case of a dusty plasma, where electric fields are created due to the presence of charged dust. The method is expected to work in the cases of compression of low frequency or dc electric fields created by other methods. Applications to high power laser heating of plasmas using this scheme are discussed.