  Formation and control of strongly nonlinear standing plasma waves (SPWs) from
a trivial equilibrium by a chirped frequency drive is discussed. If the drive
amplitude exceeds a threshold, after passage through the linear resonance in
this system, the excited wave preserves the phase-locking with the drive
yielding a controlled growth of the wave amplitude. We illustrate these
autoresonant waves via Vlasov-Poisson simulations showing formation of sharply
peaked excitations with local electron density maxima significantly exceeding
the unperturbed plasma density. The Whitham's averaged variational approach
applied to a simplified water bag model yields the weakly nonlinear evolution
of the autoresonant SPWs and the autoresonance threshold. If the chirped
driving frequency approaches some constant level, the driven SPW saturates at a
target amplitude avoiding the kinetic wave breaking.
