2.5 Dimensional Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Relativistic Plasma Collisions

TL;DR

This paper employs electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell simulations to analyze relativistic plasma collisions, focusing on two-stream and Weibel instabilities, energy dissipation, and electron energy distribution evolution.

Contribution

It introduces detailed simulation analysis of relativistic plasma collisions, comparing two key instabilities and their effects on energy dissipation and particle distributions.

Findings

Identification of dissipation differences between instabilities

Evolution patterns of electron energy distributions

Insights into relativistic plasma collision dynamics

Abstract

We use electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell codes to investigate the two-stream instability and Weibel instability when two beams of plasma collide head-on relativistically. We compare the dissipation of kinetic energies in the two cases. We also study the evolution of the resultant electron energy distribution function produced by such dissipation.