Steady mirror structures in a plasma with pressure anisotropy

TL;DR

This paper reviews the weakly nonlinear mirror instability in plasmas, introduces a variational approach to steady structures, and reports new findings on magnetic holes and bubbles, emphasizing the role of finite Larmor radius effects.

Contribution

It presents a novel variational framework for analyzing steady mirror structures and explores the stability and formation of magnetic holes and bubbles in plasmas.

Findings

Localized stationary structures are unstable below threshold.

Magnetic holes can be modeled as lump solitons of KPII.

Finite Larmor radius effects are crucial for large-amplitude structures.

Abstract

In the first part we present a review of our results concerning the weakly nonlinear regime of the mirror instability in the framework of an asymptotic model. This model belongs to the class of gradient type systems for which the free energy can only decrease in time. It reveals a behavior typical for subcritical bifurcations: below the mirror instability threshold, all localized stationary structures are unstable, while above threshold, the system displays a blow-up behavior. It is shown that taking the electrons into account (non-zero temperature) does not change the structure of the asymptotic model. For bi-Maxwellian distribution functions for both electrons and ions, the model predicts the formation of magnetic holes. The second part contains original results concerning two-dimensional steady mirror structures which can form in the saturated regime. Based on Grad-Shafranov-like equations, a gyrotropic plasma, where the pressures in the static regime are only functions of the amplitude of the local magnetic field, is shown to be amenable to a variational principle with a free energy density given by the parallel tension. This approach is used to demonstrate that small-amplitude static holes constructed slightly below the mirror instability threshold identify with lump solitons of KPII equation and turn out to be unstable. It is also shown that regularizing effects such as finite Larmor radius corrections cannot be ignored in the description of large-amplitude mirror structures. Using the gradient method, which is based on a variational principle for anisotropic MHD taking into account ion finite Larmor radius effects, we found both one-dimensional magnetic structures in the form of stripes and two-dimensional bubbles when the magnetic field component transverse to the plane is increased. These structures realize minimum of the free energy.