Particle Simulation of Electrostatic Waves Driven by an Electron Beam

A one-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell simulation is performed to study electrostatic wave excitation due to an electron beam in a plasma system. The excited fundamental and harmonic waves are analyzed with the fast Fourier transformation and the wavelet transformation. The second harmonic is suggested to be generated by wave-wave coupling during the nonlinear evolution, which involves forward propagating and backward propagating Langmuir waves. Furthermore, the background electrons may be heated and accelerated by the electrostatic waves.