Slowdown of interpenetration of two counterpropagating plasma slabs due to collective effects.

Abstract

The nonlinear evolution of electromagnetic instabilities driven by the interpenetration of two e^{-},e^{+} plasma clouds is explored using ab initio kinetic plasma simulations. We show that the plasma clouds slow down due to both oblique and Weibel generated electromagnetic fields, which deflect the particle trajectories, transferring bulk forward momentum into transverse momentum and thermal velocity spread. This process causes the flow velocity v_{inst} to decrease approximately by a factor of sqrt[1/3] in a time interval Δt_{αB}ω_{p}∼c/(v_{fl}sqrt[α_{B}]), where α_{B} is the magnetic equipartition parameter determined by the nonlinear saturation of the instabilities, v_{fl} is the initial flow speed, and ω_{p} is the plasma frequency. For the α_{B} measured in our simulations, Δt_{αB} is close to 10 times the instability growth time. We show that as long as the plasma slab length L>v_{fl}Δt_{αB}, the plasma flow is expected to slow down by a factor close to sqrt[1/3].