Generalized slab universal instability and its appearance in pair plasma

Abstract

A generalized linear dispersion relation of electromagnetic slab universal modes is derived, taking into account arbitrary ion charge state, electron finite Larmor radius (FLR) effects, and Debye shielding effects. As a consequence, it provides more accurate predictions and is applicable to a wider range of plasmas. We find that electron FLR effects have a weakly stabilizing effect on the slab universal instability in electron-ion plasma, while Debye shielding strongly stabilizes this instability when ${\lambda }_D$ approaches ${\rho }_i$ (${\lambda }_D$ is the Debye length and ${\rho }_i$ is the ion gyro-radius). In particular, we examine the stability criterion for this instability in electron-positron pair plasmas, and find that the instability persists in this simplest plasma system as long as the pair plasma number density exceeds the critical value $n_c=B^2/(8\pi m_e{c}^2)$.

arXiv comment31 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Scaling the Yield of Laser-Driven Electron-Positron Jets to Laboratory Astrophysical Applications
• Experimental observation of a current-driven instability in a neutral electron-positron beam
• Universal instability for wavelengths below the ion Larmor scale
• Gyrokinetic stability theory of electron-positron plasmas
• Gyrokinetic Stability of Electron-Positron-Ion Plasmas
• The universal instability in general geometry
• Gyrokinetic theory of slab universal modes and the non-existence of the Gradient Drift Coupling (GDC) instability
• Interchange instability and transport in matter-antimatter plasmas

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Microstability of $\beta \sim 1$ tokamak equilibria