Mathematical Research Letters

Volume 8, Issue 4, July 2001 pp. 521-534.

Instability of periodic BGK waves

Authors: Zhiwu Lin
Author institution: Brown University

Summary: We investigate the stability of periodic Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) waves. It is proved that any such wave is linearly unstable under some perturbation of twice the period. A new method is developed to find a growing mode.

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