Kinetic equilibria of relativistic collisionless plasmas in the presence of non-stationary electromagnetic fields

Abstract

The kinetic description of relativistic plasmas in the presence of time-varying and spatially non-uniform electromagnetic fields is a fundamental theoretical issue both in astrophysics and plasma physics. This refers, in particular, to the treatment of collisionless and strongly-magnetized plasmas in the presence of intense radiation sources. In this paper the problem is investigated in the framework of a covariant gyrokinetic treatment for Vlasov-Maxwell equilibria. The existence of a new class of kinetic equilibria is pointed out, which occur for spatially-symmetric systems. These equilibria are shown to exist in the presence of non-uniform background EM fields and curved space-time. In the non-relativistic limit this feature permits the determination of kinetic equilibria even for plasmas in which particle energy is not conserved due to the occurrence of explicitly time-dependent EM fields. Finally, absolute stability criteria are established which apply in the case of infinitesimal symmetric perturbations that can be either externally or internally produced.

8 pages

References in corpus (9)

• Thermal disc emission from a rotating black hole: X-ray polarization signatures
• The general relativistic Poynting-Robertson effect
• Spectral and timing properties of the accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar IGR J17511-3057
• The general relativistic Poynting-Robertson effect. II: A photon flux with nonzero angular momentum
• Spectral and timing properties of the accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar IGR J17498-2921
• Charged tori in spherical gravitational and dipolar magnetic fields
• Theory of spatially non-symmetric kinetic equilibria for collisionless plasmas
• Collisionless kinetic regimes for quasi-stationary axisymmetric accretion disc plasmas
• The signal from an emitting source moving in a Schwarzschild spacetime under the influence of a radiation field

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Synchronous Lagrangian variational principles in General Relativity
• Covariant formulation of spatially non-symmetric kinetic equilibria in magnetized astrophysical plasmas
• Carter-constant induced mechanism for generation of anisotropic kinetic equilibria in collisionless N-body systems
• Kinetic formulation of Tolman-Ehrenfest effect: Non-ideal fluids in Schwarzschild and Kerr space-times
• Magnification effect of Kerr metric by configurations of collisionless particles in non-isotropic kinetic equilibria
• Polytropic representation of the kinetic pressure tensor of non-ideal magnetized fluids in equilibrium toroidal structures
• Polytropic representation of non-isotropic kinetic pressure tensor for non-ideal plasma fluids in relativistic jets