TY - JOUR A1 - Vafin, Sergei A1 - Deka, Pranab Jyoti A1 - Pohl, Martin A1 - Bohdan, Artem T1 - Revisit of Nonlinear Landau Damping for Electrostatic Instability Driven by Blazar-induced Pair Beams JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics N2 - We revisit the effect of nonlinear Landau (NL) damping on the electrostatic instability of blazar-induced pair beams, using a realistic pair-beam distribution. We employ a simplified 2D model in k-space to study the evolution of the electric-field spectrum and to calculate the relaxation time of the beam. We demonstrate that the 2D model is an adequate representation of the 3D physics. We find that nonlinear Landau damping, once it operates efficiently, transports essentially the entire wave energy to small wave numbers where wave driving is weak or absent. The relaxation time also strongly depends on the intergalactic medium temperature, T-IGM, and for T-IGM << 10 eV, and in the absence of any other damping mechanism, the relaxation time of the pair beam is longer than the inverse Compton (IC) scattering time. The weak late-time beam energy losses arise from the accumulation of wave energy at small k, that nonlinearly drains the wave energy at the resonant k of the pair-beam instability. Any other dissipation process operating at small k would reduce that wave-energy drain and hence lead to stronger pair-beam energy losses. As an example, collisions reduce the relaxation time by an order of magnitude, although their rate is very small. Other nonlinear processes, such as the modulation instability, could provide additional damping of the nonresonant waves and dramatically reduce the relaxation time of the pair beam. An accurate description of the spectral evolution of the electrostatic waves is crucial for calculating the relaxation time of the pair beam. KW - gamma rays: general KW - instabilities KW - magnetic fields KW - relativistic processes KW - waves Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab017b SN - 0004-637X SN - 1538-4357 VL - 873 IS - 1 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vafin, Sergei A1 - Lazar, M. A1 - Fichtner, H. A1 - Schlickeiser, R. A1 - Drillisch, M. T1 - Solar wind temperature anisotropy constraints from streaming instabilities JF - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal N2 - Due to the relatively low rate of particle-particle collisions in the solar wind, kinetic instabilities (e.g., the mirror and firehose) play an important role in regulating large deviations from temperature isotropy. These instabilities operate in the high beta(parallel to) > 1 plasmas, and cannot explain the other limits of the temperature anisotropy reported by observations in the low beta beta(parallel to) < 1 regimes. However, the instability conditions are drastically modified in the presence of streaming (or counterstreaming) components, which are ubiquitous in space plasmas. These effects have been analyzed for the solar wind conditions in a large interval of heliospheric distances, 0.3-2.5 AU. It was found that proton counter-streams are much more crucial for plasma stability than electron ones. Moreover, new instability thresholds can potentially explain all observed bounds on the temperature anisotropy, and also the level of differential streaming in the solar wind. KW - solar wind KW - instabilities KW - waves KW - turbulence Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201731852 SN - 1432-0746 VL - 613 PB - EDP Sciences CY - Les Ulis ER - 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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Vafin, Sergei A1 - Riazantseva, M. A1 - Yoon, P. H. T1 - Kinetic Features in the Ion Flux Spectrum JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics N2 - An interesting feature of solar wind fluctuations is the occasional presence of a well-pronounced peak near the spectral knee. These peaks are well investigated in the context of magnetic field fluctuations in the magnetosheath and they are typically related to kinetic plasma instabilities. Recently, similar peaks were observed in the spectrum of ion flux fluctuations of the solar wind and magnetosheath. In this paper, we propose a simple analytical model to describe such peaks in the ion flux spectrum based on the linear theory of plasma fluctuations. We compare our predictions with a sample observation in the solar wind. For the given observation, the peak requires similar to 10 minutes to grow up to the observed level that agrees with the quasi-linear relaxation time. Moreover, our model well reproduces the form of the measured peak in the ion flux spectrum. The observed lifetime of the peak is about 50 minutes, which is relatively close to the nonlinear Landau damping time of 30-40 minutes. Overall, our model proposes a plausible scenario explaining the observation. KW - instabilities KW - solar wind KW - turbulence KW - waves Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa9519 SN - 0004-637X SN - 1538-4357 VL - 850 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vafin, Sergei A1 - Schlickeiser, R. A1 - Yoon, P. H. T1 - AMPLIFICATION OF COLLECTIVE MAGNETIC FLUCTUATIONS IN MAGNETIZED BI-MAXWELLIAN PLASMAS FOR PARALLEL WAVE VECTORS. I. ELECTRON-PROTON PLASMA JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics N2 - The general electromagnetic fluctuation theory is a powerful tool to analyze the magnetic fluctuation spectrum of a plasma. Recent works utilizing this theory for a magnetized non-relativistic isotropic Maxwellian electron-proton plasma have demonstrated that the equilibrium ratio of vertical bar delta B vertical bar/B-0 can be as high as 10(-12). This value results from the balance between spontaneous emission of fluctuations and their damping, and it is considerably smaller than the observed value vertical bar delta B vertical bar/B-0 in the solar wind at 1 au, where 10(-3) less than or similar to vertical bar delta B vertical bar/B-0 less than or similar to 10(-1). In the present manuscript, we consider an anisotropic bi-Maxwellian distribution function to investigate the effect of plasma instabilities on the magnetic field fluctuations. We demonstrate that these instabilities strongly amplify the magnetic field fluctuations and provide a sufficient mechanism to explain the observed value of vertical bar delta B vertical bar/B-0 in the solar wind at 1 au. KW - instabilities KW - magnetic fields KW - solar wind KW - turbulence KW - waves Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/829/1/41 SN - 0004-637X SN - 1538-4357 VL - 829 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER -