3D cylindrical BGK model of electron phase-space holes with finite velocity and polarization drift

TL;DR

This paper extends the 3D BGK model of electron phase-space holes to include effects of finite magnetic field strength and electron drift velocity, enabling more realistic modeling of EH structures in plasmas.

Contribution

It introduces modifications to the 3D BGK model to incorporate magnetic polarization effects and electron drift, improving the realism of electron hole simulations.

Findings

Enhanced model accounts for magnetic polarization current effects.

Inclusion of electron drift velocity in boundary conditions.

More accurate predictions of EH width-amplitude relationships.

Abstract

Nonlinear electron kinetic structures are regularly observed in space and experimental magnetized plasmas, called electron phase-space holes (EHs). The existence of EHs is conditioned and varies according to the ambient magnetic field and the parameters of the electron beam(s) that may generate them. The objective of this paper is to extend the 3D Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) model with cylindrical geometry developed by Chen et al. (2004,2004) to include simultaneously finite effects due to (i) the strength of the ambient magnetic field $\vec{B}_0$, by modifying the Poisson equation with a term derived from the electron polarization current, and (ii) the drift velocity $\vec{u}_e$ of the background plasma electrons with respect to the EH, by considering velocity-shifted Maxwellian distributions for the boundary conditions. This allows us to more realistically determine the distributions of trapped and passing particles forming the EHs, as well as the width-amplitude relationships for their existence.