On the role of the curvature drift instability in the dynamics of electrons in active galactic nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the centrifugally driven curvature drift instability (CDI) affects relativistic electrons in active galactic nuclei, revealing that rotational energy can generate magnetic field components and influence particle dynamics.

Contribution

The study extends previous work by including relativistic particles with different initial phases and derives the growth rate of the CDI considering resonant conditions.

Findings

Centrifugal effects efficiently pump rotational energy into drift modes.

Magnetic field lines develop a toroidal component due to CDI.

The instability leads to a configuration where particles experience no forces, suspending the CDI.

Abstract

We study the influence of the centrifugally driven curvature drift instability (CDI) on the dynamics of relativistic electrons in the magnetospheres of active galactic nuclei (AGN). We generalize our previous work by considering relativistic particles with different initial phases. Considering the Euler, continuity, and induction equations, by taking into account the resonant conditions, we derive the growth rate of the CDI. We show that due to the centrifugal effects, the rotational energy is efficiently pumped directly into the drift modes, that leads to the generation of a toroidal component of the magnetic field. As a result, the magnetic field lines transform into such a configuration when particles do not experience any forces and since the instability is centrifugally driven, at this stage the CDI is suspended.