Linear Vlasov Plasma Oscillations in the Fourier Transformed Velocity Space

In the Fourier transformed velocity space the Vlasov plasma oscillations manifest themselves as a wave propagation and scattering process corresponding to an imperfectly trapped (leaking) wave. The Landau damped solutions of the Vlasov-Poisson equation become genuine eigenmodes corresponding to complex eigenvalues. To verify this new interpretation we solve numerically the Fourier transformed Vlasov-Poisson equation by the method of lines which proved to be simple, efficient and easy to implement. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.