Electron Firehose Instabilities in High-$\beta$ ICM shocks

Abstract

The preacceleration of electrons through reflection and shock drift acceleration (SDA) is essential for the diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) of nonthermal electrons in collisionless shocks. Previous studies suggested that, in weak quasi-perpendicular ($Q_{\perp }$) shocks in the high-$\beta$ ($\beta =P_{\mathrm{gas}}/P_{\mathrm{B}}$) intracluster medium (ICM), the temperature anisotropy due to SDA-reflected electrons can drive the electron firehose instability, which excites oblique nonpropagating waves in the shock foot. In this paper, we investigate, through a linear analysis and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, the firehose instabilities driven by an electron temperature anisotropy (ETAFI) and also by a drifting electron beam (EBFI) in $\beta \sim 100$ ICM plasmas. The EBFI should be more relevant in describing the self-excitation of upstream waves in $Q_{\perp }$-shocks, since backstreaming electrons in the shock foot behave more like an electron beam rather than an anisotropic bi-Maxwellian population. We find that the basic properties of the two instabilities, such as the growth rate, $\gamma$, and the wavenumber of fast-growing oblique modes are similar in the ICM environment, with one exception; while the waves excited by the ETAFI are nonpropagating (${\omega }_r=0$), those excited by the EBFI have a non-zero frequency (${\omega }_r\ne 0$). However, the frequency is small with ${\omega }_r<\gamma$. Thus, we conclude that the interpretation of previous studies for the nature of upstream waves based on the ETAFI remains valid in $Q_{\perp }$-shocks in the ICM.

arXiv commentsubmitted to ApJ

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• Effects of Multi-scale Plasma Waves on Electron Preacceleration at Weak Quasi-perpendicular Intracluster Shocks
• Electron Acceleration at Rippled Low-Mach-number Shocks in High-beta Collisionless Cosmic Plasmas
• Cosmic Ray Acceleration and Nonthermal Radiation at Accretion Shocks in the Outer Regions of Galaxy Clusters
• Synchrotron Firehose Instability
• Microinstabilities in the Transition Region of Weak Quasi-Perpendicular Intracluster Shocks
• Electron Preacceleration at Weak Quasi-perpendicular Intracluster Shocks: Effects of Preexisting Nonthermal Electrons
• Comparing the counter-beaming and temperature anisotropy driven aperiodic electron firehose instabilities in collisionless plasma environments