Disruption of current filaments and isotropization of magnetic field in counter-streaming plasmas

Abstract

We study the stability of current filaments produced by the Weibel, or current filamentation, instability in weakly magnetized counter-streaming plasmas. It is shown that a resonance exists between the current-carrying ions and a longitudinal drift-kink mode that strongly deforms and eventually breaks the current filaments. Analytical estimates of the wavelength, growth rate and saturation level of the resonant mode are derived and validated by three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Furthermore, self-consistent simulations of counter-streaming plasmas indicate that this drift-kink mode is dominant in the slow down of the flows and in the isotropization of the magnetic field, playing an important role in the formation of collisionless shocks.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

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• Stability analysis of a periodic system of relativistic current filaments
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• Origin and Impacts of the First Cosmic Rays
• Statistical description of coalescing magnetic islands via magnetic reconnection
• Electron heating in high Mach number collisionless shocks
• Enhanced Magnetic Field Amplification by Ion-Beam Weibel Instability in Weakly Magnetized Astrophysical Shocks
• The role of plasma instabilities in relativistic radiation mediated shocks: stability analysis and particle-in-cell simulations
• Synchrotron Polarization of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow Shocks with Hydrodynamic-scale Turbulent Magnetic Field
• Efficient generation of turbulent collisionless shocks in laser-ablated counter-streaming plasmas
• Saturation Level of Ion Weibel Instability and Isotropization Length Scale in Electron-Ion Weibel-Mediated Shocks
• Characterizing filamentary magnetic structures in counter-streaming plasmas by Fourier analysis of proton images
• Evolution of three-dimensional Relativistic Ion Weibel Instability: Competition with Kink Instability
• Dark plasmas in the nonlinear regime: constraints from particle-in-cell simulations
• Energy partition in collisionless counterstreaming plasmas
• Multi-scale simulations of particle acceleration in astrophysical systems
• The most distant optically polarised GRB afterglow: GRB 240419A at z = 5.178
• Magnetized Current Filaments as a Source of Circularly Polarized Light