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Title: Strength of the spontaneously emitted collective aperiodic magnetic field fluctuations in the reionized early intergalactic medium

Journal Article · · Astrophysical Journal

Nonmagnetized, fully ionized plasmas spontaneously emit aperiodic turbulent magnetic field fluctuations. Its fluctuation intensities are dominated by the contribution from a recently discovered collective, damped mode, which modifies the earlier estimate of the total magnetic field strength in a thermal nonrelativistic electron-proton plasma to |δB|=24β{sub e}{sup 1/4}(gn{sub e}m{sub e}c{sup 2}){sup 1/2} G, where g denotes the plasma parameter and β {sub e} the thermal electron velocity in units of the speed of light, in the case of no collisional damping. Accounting for simultaneous viscous damping reduces the estimate to |δB|{sub eq} = 2305g(n{sub e}m{sub e}c {sup 2}){sup 1/2} G, depending only on the plasma parameter g and the electron density n{sub e} . For the unmagnetized intergalactic medium, immediately after the reionization onset the field strengths from this mechanism are about 6.8 × 10{sup –13} G for no collisional damping and 1.5 × 10{sup –16} G for viscous damping. Maximum spatial scales of 10{sup 15} cm of the emitted aperiodic fluctuations in cosmic voids are possible.

OSTI ID:
22342034
Journal Information:
Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 778, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English