Growth of Beam–Plasma Instabilities in the Presence of Background Inhomogeneity

Abstract

We explore how inhomogeneity in the background plasma number density alters the growth of electrostatic unstable wavemodes of beam–plasma systems. This is particularly interesting for blazar-driven beam–plasma instabilities, which may be suppressed by inhomogeneities in the intergalactic medium (IGM) as was recently claimed in the literature. Using high-resolution particle-in-cell simulations with the SHARP code, we show that the growth of the instability is local, i.e., regions with almost homogeneous background density will support the growth of the Langmuir waves even when they are separated by strongly inhomogeneous regions, resulting in an overall slower growth of the instability. We also show that if the background density is continuously varying, the growth rate of the instability is lower, although in all cases the system remains within the linear regime longer and the instability is not extinguished. In all cases, the beam loses approximately the same fraction of its initial kinetic energy in comparison to the uniform case at nonlinear saturation. Thus, inhomogeneities in the IGM are unlikely to suppress the growth of blazar-driven beam–plasma instabilities.