Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2009
We study the effects of circularly polarized plasma waves in anisotropic homogeneous plasmas. The waves propagate in the direction of an external uniform magnetic field. It is shown that in many cases only one mode, with wavenumber k, is present in the plasma. We present a computer model suitable for the study of such cases. The model is used to simulate linearly stable and unstable phenomena. A good agreement with previous predictions of linear theory is obtained. Nonlinear effects are studied and mechanisms that stop instabilities are described.