Particles trajectories in Weibel magnetic filaments with a flow-aligned magnetic field

Abstract

For a Weibel shock to form, two plasma shells have to collide and trigger the Weibel instability. At saturation, this instability generates in the overlapping region magnetic filaments with peak field $B_f$. In the absence of an external guiding magnetic field, these filaments can block the incoming flow, initiating the shock formation, if their size is larger than the Larmor radius of the incoming particles in the peak field. Here we show that this results still holds in the presence of an external magnetic field $B_0$, provided it is not too high. Yet, for $B_0\gtrsim B_f/2$, the filaments become unable to stop any particle, regardless of its initially velocity.

11 pages, 6 figures. To appear in Journal of Plasma Physics

References in corpus (2)

• Exact relativistic kinetic theory of an electron beam-plasma system: hierarchy of the competing modes in the system parameter space
• Collisionless Weibel shocks: full formation mechanism and timing

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Density jump as a function of magnetic field for collisionless shocks in pair plasmas: the perpendicular case