A fast current-driven instability in relativistic collisionless shocks

Abstract

We report here on a fast current-driven instability at relativistic collisionless shocks, triggered by the perpendicular current carried by the supra-thermal particles as they gyrate around the background magnetic field in the shock precursor. We show that this instability grows faster than any other instability studied so far in this context, and we argue that it is likely to shape the physics of the shock and of particle acceleration in a broad parameter range.

6 pages, 5 figures -- version to appear in EPL

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Perpendicular relativistic shocks in magnetized pair plasma
• Towards understanding the physics of collisionless relativistic shocks
• Physics and phenomenology of weakly magnetized, relativistic astrophysical shock waves
• Electron and Ion Acceleration in Relativistic Shocks with Applications to GRB Afterglows
• The synchrotron-self-Compton spectrum of relativistic blast waves at large Y
• Collisional behaviors of astrophysical collisionless plasmas
• Macroscopic magnetization of primordial plasma by virial shocks