Excitation of an upper hybrid wave by two intense laser beams and particle acceleration

This Letter presents an investigation of the excitation of an upper hybrid wave (UHW) by cross focusing of two intense laser beams in a collisionless hot magnetoplasma, when relativistic and ponderomotive nonlinearities are operative. The electric vectors of the two beams are polarized along uniform static magnetic field and the beams propagate perpendicular to the static magnetic field. Analytical expressions for the beam width of the laser beams, electric vector and power of the excited UHW and energy gain have been obtained. The UHW generation at the difference frequency and particle acceleration has also been studied. The nonlinear coupling between intense laser beams and UHW is so strong that UHW gets excited and a large fraction of the laser beam energy gets transferred to UHW and this UHW accelerates electrons. It has been shown that the presence of a magnetic field affects significantly the power of the UHW and energy gain by the electron in the presence of the UHW. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.