Magnetic field effect on a plasma produced by circularly polarized pulsed microwave fields

Ionization of low pressure gas with the microwave circularly polarized field, much weaker than atomic field, along the static magnetic field is studied. The electron distribution function of the produced plasma is obtained and it is shown that it is non-equilibrium and anisotropic. By making use of calculated dielectric tensor element in the adiabatic approximation in zero order with respect to the magnetic field the stability of produced plasma is studied. Furthermore, it is shown that the Weibel instability due to anisotropic property of electron distribution function grows largely when microwave frequency gets close to the electron Larmor frequency.