Single-Species Weibel Instability of Radiationless Plasma

TL;DR

This paper uses PIC simulations within a Darwin approximation to analyze the electron Weibel instability in radiationless plasma, revealing detailed dynamics of filament restructuring and anisotropy evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel simulation approach to study the Weibel instability without radiation effects, providing new insights into filament dynamics and anisotropy dependence.

Findings

Dependency of instability characteristics on thermal anisotropy

Dynamic restructuring of current filaments observed

Evolution of initial electron anisotropy detailed

Abstract

A Particle-in-Cell (PIC) numerical simulation of the electron Weibel instability is applied in a frame of Darwin (radiationless) approximation of the self-consistent fields of sparse plasma. As a result, we were able to supplement the classical picture of the instability and, in particular, to obtain the dependency of the basic characteristics (the time of development and the maximum field energy) of the thermal anisotropy parameter, to trace the dynamic restructuring of current filaments accompanying the nonlinear stage of the instability and to trace in detail the evolution of the initial anisotropy of the electron component of plasma.