Previous studies of micro-instabilities in a hot plasma have generally employed the plasma dispersion function which is strictly applicable only to a Maxwilliam distribution. Natural plasmas, however, contain a pronounced high energy component which can best be modeled a by Lorentzian distribution. The stability properties of such a distribution can be substantially different from that of a Maxwilliam plasma leading to dramatic changes in the growth or damping rate of plasma waves. This grant is to evaluate explicitly the stability of a Lorentzian plasma and to investigate the path integrated gain of waves in a fully hot plasma using a hot ray tracing code. *** //
