Kinetic Simulations of the Filamentation Instability in Pair Plasmas

Abstract

The nonlinear interaction between electromagnetic waves and plasmas attracts significant attention in astrophysics because it can affect the propagation of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) -- luminous millisecond-duration pulses detected at radio frequency. The filamentation instability (FI) -- a type of nonlinear wave-plasma interaction -- is considered to be dominant near FRB sources, and its nonlinear development may also affect the inferred dispersion measure of FRBs. In this paper, we carry out fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of the FI in unmagnetized pair plasmas. Our simulations show that the FI generates transverse density filaments, and that the electromagnetic wave propagates in near vacuum between them, as in a waveguide. The density filaments keep merging until force balance between the wave ponderomotive force and the plasma pressure gradient is established. We estimate the merging timescale and discuss the implications of filament merging for FRB observations.