Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
Two-fluid temperature-dependent relativistic waves in magnetized streaming pair plasmas
A R Soto-Chavez1, S M Mahajan, R D Hazeltine
1Institute for Fusion Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA. arsoto@physics.utexas.edu
Abstract:
A relativistic two-fluid temperature-dependent approach for a streaming magnetized pair plasma is considered. Such a scenario corresponds to secondary plasmas created at the polar caps of pulsar magnetospheres. In the model the generalized vorticity rather than the magnetic field is frozen into the fluid. For parallel propagation four transverse modes are found. Two are electromagnetic plasma modes which at high temperature become light waves. The remaining two are Alfvénic modes split into a fast and slow mode. The slow mode is cyclotron two-stream unstable at large wavelengths and is always subluminous. We find that the instability cannot be suppressed by temperature effects in the limit of large (finite) magnetic field. The fast Alfvén mode can be superluminous only at large wavelengths, however it is always subluminous at high temperatures. In this incompressible approximation only the ordinary mode is present for perpendicular propagation. For oblique propagation the dispersion relation is studied for finite and large strong magnetic fields and the results are qualitatively described.
Related Concept Videos
Electromagnetic Wave Equation
However, although electric and magnetic fields were first introduced as mathematical constructs to simplify the description of mutual forces between charges, a natural question emerges from Maxwell's equations: What...
Electromagnetic Waves
Plane Electromagnetic Waves I
The EM field is assumed to be a...
Plane Electromagnetic Waves II
Magnetostatic Boundary Conditions
Symmetry in Maxwell's Equations

