Investigation of Ion Acoustic Waves in Collisionless Plasmas

The Green's functions for the linearized ion Vlasov equation with a given boundary value are derived. The propagation properties of ion acoustic waves are calculated by performing convolution integrals over the Green's functions. For Te/Ti less than about 3 it is concluded that the collective interaction is very weak and that the propagation properties are determined almost completely by freely streaming ions.

The wave damping, being due to phase mixing, is determined by the width of the perturbed distribution function rather than by the slope of the undisturbed distribution function at the phase velocity as concluded from normal mode calculations.