Canonical Vorticity Perspective on Magnetogenesis: Unifying Weibel, Biermann, and Beyond

Abstract

We briefly review the current status of magnetogenesis, a cross-disciplinary field that bridges cosmology and plasma physics, studying the origin of magnetic fields in the universe. We formulate a canonical vorticity framework to investigate kinetic plasma physics-based magnetogenesis processes in a collisionless plasma. By considering canonical vorticity, a weighted sum of the fluid vorticity and the magnetic field as the canonical variable, this framework unifies several magnetogenesis processes, including the Biermann battery, the Weibel instability, and predicts several new pressure tensorial configurations as the fundamental source of self-generated magnetic field and vorticity in plasma. The framework is further extended to relativistic regime where an additional source of canonical vorticity, termed as kineclinicity effect, is identified. The theoretical predictions are systematically validated using particle-in-cell simulations, highlighting their implications for laboratory and astrophysical plasma environments.