Collisionless tearing instability in a relativistic pair plasma with a power-law distribution function

TL;DR

This paper investigates the collisionless tearing instability in a relativistic pair plasma with a power-law distribution, providing analytical estimates confirmed by numerical solutions, and finds that a harder spectrum suppresses the instability.

Contribution

It offers a combined analytical and numerical analysis of tearing instability in relativistic pair plasmas with power-law distributions, highlighting the effect of spectral hardness.

Findings

Growth rate decreases with harder spectra

Analytical estimates match numerical solutions

Instability suppression occurs for harder particle spectra

Abstract

We study the tearing instability of a current sheet in a relativistic pair plasma with a power law distribution function. We first estimate the growth rate analytically and then confirm the analytical results by solving numerically the dispersion equation, taking into account all exact particle trajectories within the reconnecting layer. We found that the instability is suppressed when the particle spectrum becomes harder.