It is shown that Landau damping in space (LDS), occurring for time-periodic electrostatic waves, does not lead to any deposition of energy in plasmas. A steady-state balance and a steady-state transport of energy, momentum and particles take place both for damped and growing waves. Because of the phase interference of coherent free and forced particle oscillations, the oscillatory energy of particles increases in the direction of wave propagation; the time-averaged flow of plasma kinetic energy being constant in space for these waves, the LDS must take place for a Maxwellian plasma in order to compensate for the growth of the particle oscillatory energy in space.
Cross-field plasma acceleration and potential formation induced by nonlinear Landau damping of electrostatic waves in a relativistic magnetized plasma