| Abstract: | It is well known that the parallel cuts of the parallel and perpendicular electric field in electron phase-space holes (electron
holes) have bipolar and unipolar structures, respectively. Recently, electron holes in the Earth’s plasma sheet have been
observed by THEMIS satellites to have detectable fluctuating magnetic field with regular structures. Du et al. (2011) investigated the evolution of a one-dimensional (1D) electron hole with two-dimensional (2D) electromagnetic particle-in-cell
(PIC) simulations in weakly magnetized plasma (Ω
e
<ω
pe
, where Ω
e
and ω
pe
are the electron gyrofrequency and electron plasma frequency, respectively), which initially exists in the simulation domain.
The electron hole is unstable to the transverse instability and broken into several 2D electron holes. They successfully explained
the observations by THEMIS satellites based on the generated magnetic structures associated with these 2D electron holes.
In this paper, 2D electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are performed in the x–y plane to investigate the nonlinear evolution of the electron two-stream instability in weakly magnetized plasma, where the
background magnetic field (B0 = B0(e)\vec] x)(\mathbf{B}_{0} =B_{0}\vec{\mathbf{e}} _{x}) is along the x direction. Several 2D electron holes are formed during the nonlinear evolution, where the parallel cuts of E
x
and E
y
have bipolar and unipolar structures, respectively. Consistent with the results of Du et al. (2011), we found that the current along the z direction is generated by the electric field drift motion of the trapped electrons in the electron holes due to the existence
of E
y
, which produces the fluctuating magnetic field δB
x
and δB
y
in the electron holes. The parallel cuts of δB
x
and δB
y
in the electron holes have unipolar and bipolar structures, respectively. |
