Two-Steam Instability in a Relativistically Hot Plasma

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

Pulsar emission models often invoke wave instabilities in counter-streaming pair plasma as a mechanism to impose coherence on the source. The plasma two-stream instability has figured prominently in the models. Although cold plasma theory predicts rapid growth of charge density waves, there is persistent doubt on the viability of the mechanism when finite temperature effects are included. This is a relevant question because pair plasmas created by high energy photons in the neutron star environment are expected to have a broad distribution of energy, perhaps with effective temperature parameters KBT/mc(2) ~ 100. We attempt to resolve the issue of instability in a relativistically hot system with a complete kinetic treatment of the two-streams. The appropriate dispersion relation is based on a relativistic and covariant expression of the plasma dispersion function, which involves an integral over a relativistic Maxwellian distribution. Numerical solutions for wave frequency and growth will be presented.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Two-Steam Instability in a Relativistically Hot Plasma does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Two-Steam Instability in a Relativistically Hot Plasma, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Two-Steam Instability in a Relativistically Hot Plasma will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1111908

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.