2013/09/01 by I. V. Timofeev, V. V. Annenkov · 15 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Electron #Excited state #Instability #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Kinetic energy #Kinetic theory #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Magnetic field #Plasma #Relativistic particle #Relativistic plasma #Weibel instability #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.4823722
published in Physics of Plasmas 20(9) (American Institute of Physics) · Accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas
openalex publication_date 2013/09/01 · arxiv created 2013/09/13 · arxiv updated 2015/06/17 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Efficiency of collective beam-plasma interaction strongly depends on the growth rates of dominant instabilities excited in the system. Nevertheless, exact calculations of the full unstable spectrum in the framework of relativistic kinetic theory for arbitrary magnetic fields and particle distributions were unknown until now. In this paper, we give an example of such a calculation answering the question whether the finite thermal spreads of plasma electrons are able to suppress the fastest growing modes in the beam-plasma system. It is shown that nonrelativistic temperatures of Maxwellian plasmas can stabilize only the oblique instabilities of relativistic beam. On the contrary, non-Maxwellian tails typically found in laboratory beam-plasma experiments are able to substantially reduce the growth rate of the dominant longitudinal modes affecting the efficiency of turbulent plasma heating.