Stabilization of counter propagating currents by energy conservation in collisions
Abstract
Current filamentation generates magnetic fields and shapes electron transport in dense plasmas, where collisions can either suppress or enhance its growth. Here we show that conserving electron kinetic energy in a collisional model can change both the dominant instability and its characteristic wavelength. We develop a linear kinetic theory for drifting, anisotropic electron populations with a relaxation operator that conserves particle number and laboratory-frame kinetic energy while allowing momentum transfer to a stationary ion background. For counterstreaming currents, energy conservation maintains the stabilizing influence of charge separation over a broader range of collision frequencies than a model conserving particle number alone. At intermediate collision rates, the resulting suppression of transverse filamentation allows a nearly aperiodic oblique mode to dominate, reducing the maximum growth rate and shifting the wavelength of the fastest-growing perturbation. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations support predicted growth rates of up to more than a magnitude lower than expected without energy conserving collision.
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BibTeX
@misc{kluge2026stabilization,
title = {{Stabilization of counter propagating currents by energy conservation in collisions}},
author = {Thomas Kluge and Jannis Schulz and Arthur Hirsch-Passicos and Pawel Ordyna and Ulrich Schramm},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.41748},
eprint = {2610.41748},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41748},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Stabilization of counter propagating currents by energy conservation in collisions
AU - Thomas Kluge
AU - Jannis Schulz
AU - Arthur Hirsch-Passicos
AU - Pawel Ordyna
AU - Ulrich Schramm
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.41748
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41748
AB - Current filamentation generates magnetic fields and shapes electron transport in dense plasmas, where collisions can either suppress or enhance its growth. Here we show that conserving electron kinetic energy in a collisional model can change both the dominant instability and its characteristic wavelength. We develop a linear kinetic theory for drifting, anisotropic electron populations with a relaxation operator that conserves particle number and laboratory-frame kinetic energy while allowing momentum transfer to a stationary ion background. For counterstreaming currents, energy conservation maintains the stabilizing influence of charge separation over a broader range of collision frequencies than a model conserving particle number alone. At intermediate collision rates, the resulting suppression of transverse filamentation allows a nearly aperiodic oblique mode to dominate, reducing the maximum growth rate and shifting the wavelength of the fastest-growing perturbation. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations support predicted growth rates of up to more than a magnitude lower than expected without energy conserving collision.
ER -