Weibel instability
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The Weibel instability is a plasma instability present in homogeneous or nearly-homogeneous electromagnetic plasmas which possess an anisotropy in momentum (velocity) space. In the linear limit the instability causes exponential growth of electromagnetic fields in the plasma which help restore momentum space isotropy. In the limit of an extremely anisotropic distribution the Weibel instability is related to one- or two-dimensional stream instabilities.
[edit] References
- E.S. Weibel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2, 83 (1959); http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v2/i3/p83_1
