Temperature stabilization of instabilities in force-free magnetospheres

Relative streaming between particle species may arise naturally in magnetospheres, to maintain a force-free charge density. Such streaming causes instabilities which are stabilized by temperature. Relativistic stability conditions are calculated and it is shown that an energy spread Δγ approximately 1.5 γ can stabilize pulsar electron-positron plasmas, for a reasonable parameter range. Compact radio sources without strong beaming may be relatively immune to temperature stabilization, however. (author)