Relaxation of relativistic pair plasma in a massive photon field

Abstract

The relaxation of relativistic hot electron–positron plasma is investigated by incorporating the effect of non-zero photon mass, and a quadruple Beltrami (QB) relaxed state for the magnetic vector potential is derived. The QB state is a linear superposition of four single force-free fields and is characterized by four self-organized structures of different length scales. The analysis of QB states shows that for certain values of generalized helicities at lower relativistic temperatures, plasma shows diamagnetic behaviour. It is also noteworthy that the inclusion of non-zero photon mass naturally provides the possibility of multiscale structure formation in the relaxed state. In this scenario, one of the field structures is significantly larger than the Compton wavelength of photons, while the other three structures are on the scale of the electron skin depth. The potential implications of this QB state for astrophysical environments are also discussed.

Self‐organization of earth's inner magnetospheric multi‐ion plasma

“…In this plasma model, multi‐Beltrami relaxed states such as DB, TB, and QB have also been formulated and investigated by taking into consideration the inertial effects of both positive and negative ion species and adjusting the generalized vorticities of ion species. [ 42–44 ] Furthermore, it is also crucial to mention that in recent years, such multi‐Beltrami states and their implications have also been explored in a variety of astrophysical plasmas, such as dense degenerate plasmas, [ 37,45,46 ] classical relativistic hot plasmas, [ 47–51 ] and general relativistic plasmas. [ 52,53 ]…”