Plasma instabilities and magnetic field growth in clusters of galaxies

We show that under very general conditions, cluster plasmas threaded by weak magnetic fields are subject to very fast growing plasma instabilities driven by the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (viscous stress) with respect to the local direction of the magnetic field. Such an anisotropy will natur...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Schekochihin, A, Cowley, S, Kulsrud, R, Hammett, G, Sharma, P
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Institute of Physics Publishing 2005