Ion temperature anisotropy instabilities in planetary magnetosheaths

Abstract

There has been a lack of understanding why mirror modes are present in planetary magnetosheaths, at comets, and in the heliosheath. Linear theory indicates that the ion cyclotron instability should dominate over the mirror mode instability in electron‐proton plasma. In this paper, we take a new approach. We examine the role of plasma electron temperature anisotropy on the ion cyclotron and mirror mode instabilities. It will be shown that an inclusion of anisotropic electrons with T⊥ e/T∥ e ≥ 1.2 reduces the ion cyclotron growth rate substantially and increases the mirror mode growth rate. The minimum plasma beta for mirror instability dominance (over the ion cyclotron instability) is βp = 0.5.