A new low-beta regime for unstable proton firehose modes in bi-Kappa distributed plasmas

Abstract

In the solar wind plasma an excess of kinetic temperature along the background magnetic field stimulates proton firehose modes to grow if the parallel plasma beta parameter is sufficiently high, i.e., $β_{p \parallel}\gtrsim 1$. This instability can prevent the expansion-driven anisotropy from increasing indefinitely, and explain the observations. Moreover, such kinetic instabilities are expected to be even more effective in the presence of suprathermal Kappa-distributed populations, which are ubiquitous in the solar wind, are less affected by collisions than the core population, but contribute with an additional free energy. In this work we use both linear and extended quasi-linear (QL) frameworks to characterize the unstable periodic proton firehose modes (propagating parallel to the magnetic field) under the influence of suprathermal protons. Linear theory predicts a systematic stimulation of the instability, suprathermals amplifying the growth rates and decreasing the instability thresholds to lower anisotropies and lower plasma betas ($β_{p \parallel}<1$). In perfect agreement with these results, the QL approach reveals a significant enhancement of the resulting electromagnetic fluctuations up to the saturation with a stronger back reaction on protons, leading also to a faster and more efficient relaxation of the temperature anisotropy.