Relativistic Tearing and Drift-kink Instabilities in Two-fluid Simulations

TL;DR

This study uses two-fluid relativistic MHD simulations to analyze tearing and drift-kink instabilities in collisionless relativistic pair plasma current sheets, showing results consistent with PIC simulations and highlighting their potential for astrophysical plasma research.

Contribution

It demonstrates that two-fluid simulations can effectively replicate PIC results for relativistic plasma instabilities, offering a scalable tool for astrophysical plasma studies.

Findings

Growth rates match PIC simulation results.

Two-fluid simulations capture key instability behaviors.

Potential for large-scale astrophysical plasma modeling.

Abstract

The stability of current sheets in collisionless relativistic pair plasma was studied via two-dimensional two-fluid relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations with vanishing internal friction between fluids. In particular, we investigated the linear growth of the tearing and drift-kink modes in the current sheets both with and without the guide field and obtained the growth rates which are very similar to what has been found in the corresponding PIC simulations. This suggests that the two-fluid simulations can be useful in studying the large-scale dynamics of astrophysical relativistic plasmas in problems involving magnetic reconnection.