A resistive instability of lower hybrid-like waves in regions with parallel currents

Abstract

The resistive instabilities and dispersion of obliquely propagating waves near the lower hybrid (LH) frequency are studied in plasma carrying a current parallel to the magnetic field. Possible applications of these instabilities include magnetic reconnection regions where LH-like waves may accelerate and heat both ions and electrons. A resistive instability is found in one of the four LH-like wave modes for electron drift speeds several times greater than the electron thermal speed for representative parameters. Numerical fully electromagnetic kinetic calculations of the solutions to the linear dispersion equation are compared with more approximate analytic calculations and show good agreement. The analytic results indicate that ion magnetization effects play a critical role in the resistive instability.

PDRK: A General Kinetic Dispersion Relation Solver for Magnetized Plasma

“…1 0.2 0.4 0.6 0. of Ref. [22] for instability of the lower hybrid-like waves driven by parallel current. The current is taken by electron beam in Ref.…”

“…The parameters (ω pe = 100ω ce , m i = 1836m e , T i = T e = 0.01, θ = 1.5528 = 88.97 • and v d = 0.99) are taken similar to those in Fig.1 of Ref. [22] for instability of the lower hybrid-like waves driven by parallel current. The current is taken by electron beam in Ref.…”

“…The current is taken by electron beam in Ref. [22]. We also consider an ion beam and solve the dispersion relations for the following two cases: (a)…”