Quasilinear saturation of the aperiodic ordinary mode streaming instability
- Institut für Theoretische Physik, Lehrstuhl IV: Weltraum-und Astrophysik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum (Germany)
- Institute for Physical Science & Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 (United States)
- Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Celestijnenlaan 200B, 3001 Leuven (Belgium)
- Faculty of Human Development, University of Toyama, 3190, Gofuku, Toyama City, Toyama 930-8555 (Japan)
In collisionless plasmas, only kinetic instabilities and fluctuations are effective in reducing the free energy and scatter plasma particles, preventing an increase of their anisotropy. Solar energetic outflows into the interplanetary plasma give rise to important thermal anisotropies and counterstreaming motions of plasma shells, and the resulting instabilities are expected to regulate the expansion of the solar wind. The present paper combines quasilinear theory and kinetic particle-in-cell simulations in order to study the weakly nonlinear saturation of the ordinary mode in hot counter-streaming plasmas with a temperature anisotropy as a follow-up of the paper by Seough et al. [Phys. Plasmas 22, 082122 (2015)]. This instability provides a plausible mechanism for the origin of dominating, two-dimensional spectrum of transverse magnetic fluctuations observed in the solar wind. Stimulated by the differential motion of electron counterstreams the O mode instability may convert their free large-scale energy by nonlinear collisionless dissipation on plasma particles.
- OSTI ID:
- 22490148
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 9; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
The instability condition of the aperiodic ordinary mode for new scalings of the counterstreaming parameters
On the marginal instability threshold condition of the aperiodic ordinary mode