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Whistler instability in plasmas with anisotropic and non-Maxwellian velocity distributions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2009

Kai Fong Lee
Kai Fong Lee
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace and Atmospheric Sciences, The Catholic University of America, Washington
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Abstract

The instability of right-handed, circularly polarized electromagnetic waves, propagating along an external magnetic field (whistler mode), is studied for electron plasmas with distribution functions peaked at some non-zero value of the transverse velocity. Based on the linearized Vlasov-Maxwell equations, the criteria for instability are given both for non-resonant instabilities arising from distribution functions with no thermal spread parallel to the magnetic field, and for resonant instabilities arising from distribution functions with Maxwellian dependence in the parallel velocities. It is found that, in general, the higher the average perpendicular energy, the more is the plasma susceptible to the whistler instability. These criteria are then applied to a sharply peaked ring distribution, and to loss-cone distributions of the Dory, Guest & Harris (1965) type.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , December 1971 , pp. 449 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

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