Whistler instability in plasmas with anisotropic and non-Maxwellian velocity distributions

Abstract

The instability of right-handed, circularly polarized electromagnetic waves, propagating along an external magnetic field (whistler mode), is studied for electron plasmas with distribution functions peaked at some non-zero value of the transverse velocity. Based on the linearized Vlasov-Maxwell equations, the criteria for instability are given both for non-resonant instabilities arising from distribution functions with no thermal spread parallel to the magnetic field, and for resonant instabilities arising from distribution functions with Maxwellian dependence in the parallel velocities. It is found that, in general, the higher the average perpendicular energy, the more is the plasma susceptible to the whistler instability. These criteria are then applied to a sharply peaked ring distribution, and to loss-cone distributions of the Dory, Guest & Harris (1965) type.