JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 107, NO. A10, 1312,

Linear theory of the mirror instability in non-Maxwellian space plasmas

Oleg A. Pokhotelov

Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Science,
Moscow, Russia

Rudolf A. Treumann

Roald Z. Sagdeev

Department of Physics, University of Maryland,
College Park, Maryland, USA

Michael A. Balikhin

Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, Sheffield University,
Sheffield, UK

Oleg G. Onishchenko

Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Science,
Moscow, Russia

Vladimir P. Pavlenko and Ingmar Sandberg

Department of Astronomy and Space Physics, Uppsala University,
Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract

[1]   A unified theory of the mirror instability in space plasmas is developed. In the standard quasi-hydrodynamic approach, the most general mirror-mode dispersion relation is derived and the growth rate of the mirror instability is obtained in terms of arbitrary electron and ion velocity distribution functions. Finite electron temperature effects and arbitrary electron temperature anisotropies are included. The new dispersion relation allows the treatment of more general space plasma equilibria such as the Dory–Guest–Harris (DGH) or Kennel–Ashour-Abdalla (KA) loss cone equilibria, as well as distributions with power law velocity dependence that are modeled by the family of -distributions. Under these conditions, we derive the general kinetic mirror instability growth rate including finite electron temperature effects. As for an example of equilibrium particle distribution, we analyze a large class of to suprathermal loss cone distributions in view of application to a variety of space plasmas like the solar wind, magnetosheath, ring current plasma, and the magnetospheres of other planets.

Received 13 October 2001; revised 14 May 2002; accepted 4 June 2002; published 18 October 2002.