Plasma effects on fast pair beams II. Reactive versus kinetic instability of parallel electrostatic wave

Abstract

The interaction of TeV gamma rays from distant blazars with the extragalactic background light produces relativistic electron-positron pair beams by the photon-photon annihilation process. Using the linear instability analysis in the kinetic limit, which properly accounts for the longitudinal and the small but finite perpendicular momentum spread in the pair momentum distribution function, the growth rate of parallel propagating electrostatic oscillations in the intergalactic medium is calculated. Contrary to the claims of Miniati and Elyiv (2013) we find that neither the longitudinal nor the perpendicular spread in the relativistic pair distribution function do significantly affect the electrostatic growth rates. The maximum kinetic growth rate for no perpendicular spread is even about an order of magnitude greater than the corresponding reactive maximum growth rate. The reduction factors to the maximum growth rate due to the finite perpendicular spread in the pair distribution function are tiny, and always less than $10^{-4}$. We confirm the earlier conclusions by Broderick et al. (2012) and us, that the created pair beam distribution function is quickly unstable in the unmagnetized intergalactic medium. Therefore, there is no need to require the existence of small intergalactic magnetic fields to scatter the produced pairs, so that the explanation (made by several authors) of the FERMI non-detection of the inverse Compton scattered GeV gamma rays by a finite deflecting intergalactic magnetic field is not necessary. In particular, the various derived lower bounds for the intergalactic magnetic fields are invalid due to the pair beam instability argument.

accepted by ApJ, 12 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Lower limit on the strength and filling factor of extragalactic magnetic fields
• Gamma-ray induced cascades and magnetic fields in intergalactic medium

Cited by in corpus (41)

• Progress on Cosmological Magnetic Fields
• Stringent Limit on Primordial Magnetic Fields from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Relativistic Pair Beams from TeV Blazars: A Source of Reprocessed GeV Emission rather than IGM Heating
• The Gamma-Ray Window to Intergalactic Magnetism
• Deep observation of the NGC 1275 region with MAGIC: search of diffuse gamma-ray emission from cosmic rays in the Perseus cluster
• Star formation history, dust attenuation and extragalactic background light
• On the Evolution of the Cosmic Ionizing Background
• The Effect of Nonlinear Landau Damping on Ultrarelativistic Beam Plasma Instabilities
• PIC methods in astrophysics: Simulations of relativistic jets and kinetic physics in astrophysical systems
• Missing Gamma-ray Halos and the Need for New Physics in the Gamma-ray Sky
• The electrostatic instability for realistic pair distributions in blazar/EBL cascades
• A self-consistent and time-dependent hybrid blazar emission model - Properties and application
• The Linear Instability of Dilute Ultrarelativistic $e^{\pm }$ Pair Beams
• Probing Intergalactic Magnetic Fields with Simulations of Electromagnetic Cascades
• Importance of resolving the spectral support of beam-plasma instabilities in simulations
• Conditions for the onset of the current filamentation instability in the laboratory
• Growth of beam-plasma instabilities in the presence of background inhomogeneity
• The role of resonant plasma instabilities in the evolution of blazar induced pair beams
• Parity-odd correlators of diffuse gamma rays and intergalactic magnetic fields
• Revisit of non-linear Landau damping for electrostatic instability driven by blazar-induced pair beams
• Plasma effects on relativistic pair beams from TeV blazars: PIC simulations and analytical predictions
• Patchy blazar heating: diversifying the thermal history of the intergalactic medium
• Bow Ties in the Sky I: The Angular Structure of Inverse Compton Gamma-ray Halos in the Fermi Sky
• Constraints on the intergalactic magnetic field from $\gamma$-ray observations of GRB 190114C
• Suppression of the TeV pair-beam plasma instability by a tangled weak intergalactic magnetic field
• Bow Ties in the Sky II: Searching for Gamma-ray Halos in the Fermi Sky Using Anisotropy
• Impact of Plasma Instability on Constraint of the Intergalactic Magnetic Field
• Fundamental Implications of Intergalactic Magnetic Field Observations
• First constraints on the strength of the extragalactic magnetic field from $\gamma$-ray observations of GRB 221009A
• Constraints on the extragalactic magnetic field strength from blazar spectra based on 145 months of Fermi-LAT observations
• The Intrinsic Gamma-Ray Spectrum of TXS 0506+056: Intergalactic Propagation Effects
• On the Measurement of the Helicity of Intergalactic Magnetic Fields Using Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays
• The aperiodic firehose instability of counter-beaming electrons in space plasmas
• Intergalactic magnetic field studies by means of $\gamma$-ray emission from GRB 190114C
• Robustness of the filamentation instability in arbitrarily oriented magnetic field: Full 3D calculation
• Prospects for detection of the pair-echo emission from TeV gamma-ray bursts
• Constraining blazar heating with the 2<z<3 Lyman-$\alpha$ forest
• MeV cosmic-ray electrons modify the TeV pair-beam plasma instability
• Simulations of Astrophysically Relevant Pair Beam Instabilities in a Laboratory Context
• Revisiting constraints on magnetogenesis from baryon asymmetry
• The impact of plasma instability cooling on intergalactic magnetic field constraints in GeV cascades for optimized instability cooling parameters