Effects of suprathermal electrons on electron-acoustic instabilities

Abstract

We study the electron-acoustic instabilities in plasmas with two kappa-distributed electrons and stationary ions. The instabilities are driven by the relative drift between two electron components. The suprathermal effects of different species on growth rates and instability thresholds are analyzed and compared by numerical calculations. The present study reveals that the suprathermal electrons with slow most probable speed play more important roles than the suprathermal ones with fast most probable speed. The former significantly reduces the instabilities and raises the instability thresholds. The parameters used in this study are inspired from the observations in Earth's magnetopause.