TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vafin, Sergei
A1  - Rafighi, Iman
A1  - Pohl, Martin
A1  - Niemiec, Jacek
T1  - The Electrostatic Instability for Realistic Pair Distributions in Blazar/EBL Cascades
JF  - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics
N2  - This work revisits the electrostatic instability for blazar-induced pair beams propagating through the intergalactic medium (IGM) using linear analysis and PIC simulations. We study the impact of the realistic distribution function of pairs resulting from the interaction of high-energy gamma-rays with the extragalactic background light. We present analytical and numerical calculations of the linear growth rate of the instability for the arbitrary orientation of wave vectors. Our results explicitly demonstrate that the finite angular spread of the beam dramatically affects the growth rate of the waves, leading to the fastest growth for wave vectors quasi-parallel to the beam direction and a growth rate at oblique directions that is only a factor of 2-4 smaller compared to the maximum. To study the nonlinear beam relaxation, we performed PIC simulations that take into account a realistic wide-energy distribution of beam particles. The parameters of the simulated beam-plasma system provide an adequate physical picture that can be extrapolated to realistic blazar-induced pairs. In our simulations, the beam looses only 1% of its energy, and we analytically estimate that the beam would lose its total energy over about 100 simulation times. An analytical scaling is then used to extrapolate the parameters of realistic blazar-induced pair beams. We find that they can dissipate their energy slightly faster by the electrostatic instability than through inverse-Compton scattering. The uncertainties arising from, e.g., details of the primary gamma-ray spectrum are too large to make firm statements for individual blazars, and an analysis based on their specific properties is required.
KW  - gamma rays: general
KW  - instabilities
KW  - magnetic fields
KW  - relativistic processes
KW  - waves
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aab552
SN  - 0004-637X
SN  - 1538-4357
VL  - 857
IS  - 1
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  -