Temperature-dependent Saturation of Weibel-type Instabilities in Counter-streaming Plasmas
Abstract
We present the first 2X2V continuum Vlasov–Maxwell simulations of interpenetrating, unmagnetized plasmas to study the competition between two-stream, Oblique, and filamentation modes in the weakly relativistic regime. We find that after nonlinear saturation of the fastest-growing two-stream and Oblique modes, the effective temperature anisotropy, which drives current filament formation via the secular Weibel instability, has a strong dependence on the internal temperature of the counter-streaming plasmas. The effective temperature anisotropy is significantly more reduced in colder than in hotter plasmas, leading to orders of magnitude lower magnetization for colder plasmas. A strong dependence of the energy conversion efficiency of Weibel-type instabilities on internal beam temperature has implications for determining their contribution to the observed magnetization of many astrophysical and laboratory plasmas.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 20, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.3847/2041-8213/ab0556
Entities
People
- Ammar Hakim
- James Juno
- Jason TenBarge
- Valentin Skoutnev
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Department of Energy