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Related papers: Buoyancy Instabilities in Degenerate, Collisional,…

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I calculate the linear stability of a stratified low collisionality plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field. Heat is assumed to flow only along magnetic field lines. In the absence of a heat flux in the background plasma, Balbus…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Eliot Quataert

We study the linear stability of weakly magnetized differentially rotating plasmas in both collisionless kinetic theory and Braginskii's theory of collisional, magnetized plasmas. We focus on the very weakly magnetized limit that is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-23 Eliot Quataert , Tobias Heinemann , Anatoly Spitkovsky

The intracluster medium of galaxy clusters is a weakly collisional, high-beta plasma in which the transport of heat and momentum occurs primarily along magnetic-field lines. Anisotropic heat conduction allows convective instabilities to be…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-04 Matthew W. Kunz , Tamara Bogdanovic , Christopher S. Reynolds , James M. Stone

Weakly collisional space plasmas are rarely in local thermal equilibrium and often exhibit non-Maxwellian electron and ion velocity distributions that lead to the growth of microinstabilities, that is, enhanced electric and magnetic fields…

It is shown that the transport in low temperature, collisional, bounded plasma is enhanced by instabilities at high magnetic field. While the magnetic field confines the electrons in a stable plasma, the instability completely destroys the…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2019-09-04 R. Lucken , A. Bourdon , M. Lieberman , P. Chabert

We consider the linear axisymmetric stability of a differentially rotating collisionless plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field; we restrict our analysis to wavelengths much larger than the proton Larmor radius. This is the kinetic…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Eliot Quataert , William Dorland , Greg Hammett

We investigate the linear tearing instability in weakly collisional plasmas using a non-ideal gyrotropic-MHD framework, uncovering a previously unknown scaling relation for the instability growth rate in high-$\beta$ environments. Even…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-10-09 Gabriel L. Ferreira-Santos , Grzegorz Kowal , Diego A. Falceta-Gonçalves

We show that under very general conditions, cluster plasmas threaded by weak magnetic fields are subject to very fast growing plasma instabilities driven by the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (viscous stress) with respect to the local…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 A. A. Schekochihin , S. C. Cowley , R. M. Kulsrud , G. W. Hammett , P. Sharma

In weakly-collisional plasmas such as the intracluster medium (ICM), heat and momentum transport become anisotropic with respect to the local magnetic field direction. Anisotropic heat conduction causes the slow magnetosonic wave to become…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-27 Matthew W. Kunz

Using the transport equations for an ideal anisotropic collisionless plasma derived from the Vlasov equation by the 16-moment method, we analyse the influence of pressure anisotropy exhibited by collisionless magnetized plasmas on the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-27 M. S. Nakwacki , J. Peralta-Ramos

Event horizon-scale observations of low-luminosity black hole accretion flows favor magnetically arrested disks, characterized by dynamically important magnetic fields ($\beta\lesssim1$, where $\beta$ is the ratio of plasma thermal pressure…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-10 Vedant Dhruv , Lorenzo Sironi , Jordy Davelaar , Aaron Tran

We show that, under Braginskii magneto-hydrodynamics, anti-parallel gradients in average ion charge state and electron temperature can be unstable to the growth of self-generated magnetic fields. The instability is analogous to the…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2021-02-03 James D. Sadler , Hui Li

In weakly collisional astrophysical plasmas, such as the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters, the amplification of cosmic magnetic fields by chaotic fluid motions is hampered by the adiabatic production of magnetic-field-aligned pressure…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2019-12-25 Denis A. St-Onge

We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a collisionless, electron-ion plasma with a decreasing background magnetic field, $B$, to study the effect of velocity-space instabilities on the viscous heating and thermal conduction of the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-02-27 Mario Riquelme , Eliot Quataert , Daniel Verscharen

The low-frequency instability of a cylindrical poorly magnetized plasma with an inward-directed radial electric field is studied changing the gas pressure and the ion cyclotron frequency. The unstable frequency always decreases when the gas…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2016-05-25 Thiery Pierre

We study the effects of anisotropic thermal conduction on low-collisionality, astrophysical plasmas using two and three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations. For weak magnetic fields, dilute plasmas are buoyantly unstable for either…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2012-12-05 Michael McCourt , Ian J. Parrish , Prateek Sharma , Eliot Quataert

We study wave instability in an collisionless, rarefied hot plasma (e.g. solar wind or corona). We consider the anisotropy produced by the magnetic field, when the thermal gas pressures across and along the field become unequal. We apply…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-14 N. S. Dzhalilov , V. D. Kuznetsov , J. Staude

Over the last decade, substantial efforts have been devoted to understanding the stability properties, transport phenomena, and long-term evolution of weakly-collisional, magnetized plasmas which are stratified in temperature. These studies…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2013-02-15 Martin E. Pessah , Sagar Chakraborty

We solve the linearised Vlasov-Fokker-Planck (VFP) equation to show that heat flow or an electrical current in a magnetized collisional plasma is unstable to the growth of a circularly polarised transverse perturbation to a zeroth order…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2020-05-01 Anthony Bell , Robert Kingham , Henry Watkins , James Matthews

Slow dynamical changes in magnetic-field strength and invariance of the particles' magnetic moments generate ubiquitous pressure anisotropies in weakly collisional, magnetized astrophysical plasmas. This renders them unstable to fast,…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2015-06-22 F. Rincon , A. A. Schekochihin , S. C. Cowley
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