On the multistream approach of relativistic Weibel instability. III. Comparison with full-kinetic Vlasov simulations

Alain Ghizzo (1)

1 IJL - Institut Jean Lamour

The saturation of the Weibel instability in the relativistic regime is investigated within the Hamiltonian reduction technique based on the multistream approach developed in paper I in the linear case and in paper II for the nonlinear saturation. In this work, the study is compared with results obtained by full kinetic 1D2V Vlasov-Maxwell simulations based on a semi-Lagrangian technique. For a temperature anisotropy, qualitatively different regimes are realized depending on the excitation of the longitudinal (plasma) electric field, in contrast with the existing theories of the Weibel instability based on their purely transverse characters. The emphasis here is on gaining a better understanding of the nonlinear aspects of the Weibel instability. The multistream model offers an alternate way to make calculations or numerical experiments more tractable, when only a few moments of the velocity distribution of the plasma are considered.

Domaines: Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Alain Ghizzo. On the multistream approach of relativistic Weibel instability. III. Comparison with full-kinetic Vlasov simulations. Physics of Plasmas, 2013, 20 (8), pp.82111 - 82111. ⟨10.1063/1.4817752⟩. ⟨hal-01287084⟩