Steady-state periodic plasma-field structures created by a wire antenna

Summary form only given. The excitation of nonlinear standing waves in the magnetic-field-free corona surrounding a thin wire antenna operating in a rarefied air was investigated experimentally. The experiments were carried out in a cylindrical glass discharge chamber (length 1 m, radius 20 cm). The antenna, a cylindrical monopole (length 40 cm, radius 1 mm) covered by a thin insulator layer, was placed along the chamber axis above the metal sheet. The input signal was provided by a RF oscillator operating in the frequency band from 0.1 to 50 MHz with a maximum output voltage 500 V. The air pressure was fixed in the range from 0.1 to 1 Torr. Plasma diagnostics were accomplished by means of a movable Langmuir probe with induction feed and optical-fiber information transmission, the radial component of the near-antenna electric field E/sub r/ was tested by a probe connected with registration facilities with a high-resistive line.