Collisional effects on the oblique instability in relativistic beam-plasma interactions

Abstract

The general oblique instability for a relativistic electron beam propagating through a warm and resistive plasma is investigated fully kinetically by a variable rotation method. Analysis shows that the electrostatic part of the oblique instability is attenuated and eventually stabilized by collisional effects. However, the electromagnetic part of the oblique instability (EMOI) is enhanced. Since the current-filamentation instability as a special case of the EMOI has a larger growth rate, it becomes dominant in the collisional case as shown in our two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. While the beam diverges in the collisionless case, it can become magnetically collimated in the collisional case due to stabilization of the electrostatic instabilities when the initial beam spreading angle is less than certain magnitude such as a dozen degrees. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4736980]