Simulation of Electron-Electron Two Stream Instability (ETSI)

Abstract

Stream instabilities are widely studied due to their importance in understanding astrophysical phenomena such as acceleration of high velocity of solar wind. In this work, the simulation of electron two stream instability was performed using Vorpal Simulation (VSim) code to explore the kinetic energy of plasma that arises due to the interaction between two counter-streaming electron beams at different velocities as well as different electron densities. The electron beam velocity was varied in the range of 3.58 × 10⁶ m/s - 7.98 × 10⁶ m/s and the resulting kinetic energy of plasma increased from 19 × 10⁻⁶J - 210 × 10⁻⁶J respectively. Also, increasing the electron density at fixed beam velocity from 1.05 × 10¹⁴m⁻³ - 5.84 × 10¹⁴m⁻³, the kinetic energy was observed to increase from 100 × 10⁻⁶J - 200 × 10⁻⁶J .However, the kinetic energy of the electron increases more with increasing beam velocity than with increasing electron density. The electric field energy which arose due to the interaction of the streaming beams did not exceed the energy of the beams.