Kinetic instability of whistlers in electron beam-plasma systems

Abstract

The whistlers in space plasmas and in magnetic fusion experiments are destabilized by beams of fast electrons. While the linear regime of instability is analytically tractable, in most practical cases, the instability operates at the saturated level during the stages of observation and measurement. The saturated states, however, involve nonlinear whistlers, which remain best accessible for analysis by kinetic simulations. Results of electromagnetic Vlasov simulations are presented, analyzing an anisotropic electron beam driven whistler instability. The simulations cover the initially unstable regime followed by a saturated or marginally stable regime. Both regimes are separated by an intermediate nonlinear regime during which the electron distribution undergoes a kinetically self-consistent modification. A linearly obtained generalized marginal stability condition is applied to the stabilized state. The condition obtained in its dispersive version shows the β|| at threshold and, in turn, the residual anisotropy, to be a function of the whistler mode number k.