Question

Ion acoustic waves in a deuterium plasma?

Answer 1

There are several ways to excite ion acoustic waves in plasmas and I guess you can summarize most of them as inserting an electrode into a plasma and applying a time-varying potential to it. The frequency of the applied potential must be in the correct range (if it is too large, larger than the ion plasma frequency, an ion acoustic wave cannot propagate) and the amplitude of the time-varying potential should not be too large (to avoid triggering non-linear effects, like for example solitons).


A lot of this work has been done in the early time of plasma physics in low-temperature plasmas.


As for the other questions you have asked, you should probably make a new, slightly more detailed post for each of them (yes, Landau damping of ion acoustic waves has been observed; no, ion acoustic waves do not play a significant role in magnetic confinement plasmas to heat up the plasma to fusion temperatures).

Answer 2

There are several ways to excite ion acoustic waves in plasmas and I guess you can summarize most of them as inserting an electrode into a plasma and applying a time-varying potential to it.