Exact relativistic kinetic theory of an electron beam-plasma system: hierarchy of the competing modes in the system parameter space

Abstract

Besides being one of the most fundamental basic issues of plasma physics, the stability analysis of an electron beam-plasma system is of critical relevance in many areas of physics. Surprisingly, decades of extensive investigation had not yet resulted in a realistic unified picture of the multidimensional unstable spectrum within a fully relativistic and kinetic framework. All attempts made so far in this direction were indeed restricted to simplistic distribution functions and/or did not aim at a complete mapping of the beam-plasma parameter space. The present paper comprehensively tackles this problem by implementing an exact linear model. We show that three kinds of modes compete in the linear phase, which can be classified according to the direction of their wavenumber with respect to the beam. We then determine their respective domain of preponderance in a three-dimensional parameter space. All these results are supported by multidimensional particle-in-cell simulations.

To appear in PRL

References in corpus (1)

• Thermal equilibrium and statistical thermometers in special relativity

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Relativistic Brownian Motion
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• Simulation study of the filamentation of counter-streaming beams of the electrons and positrons in plasmas
• Three dimensional filamentary structures of a relativistic electron beam in Fast Ignition plasmas