Plasma heating by a low current relativistic electron beam

Injection of a 500 A electron beam into a precreated plasma results in heating of plasma electrons to temperatures of 400 eV. The heating occurs only in a finite region of the plasma column near the diode. The amount of energy transfer is of the same order as theoretical estimates for electron-electron two-stream interaction, whereas the calculated growth rate enables saturation during the short beam pulse of 20 ns.