Electron mirror instability: Particle-in-cell simulations

Abstract

Properties of the electron mirror instability and its competition with the usually dominant whistler (electron cyclotron) instability driven by the electron perpendicular temperature anisotropy are investigated on the linear level using a Vlasov linear solver and on the nonlinear level using a two-dimensional full particle code. The simulation results show that the linearly subdominant electron mirror instability may compete on the nonlinear level with the whistler instability and may even become eventually the dominant mode that generates robust non-propagating sub-ion-scale coherent structures in the form of magnetic peaks.