Excitation of large-amplitude Alfven waves in a nonrelativistic electron-positron plasma with a temperature anisotropy

If the distribution of pair plasmas is a bi-Maxwellian with Tperpendicular/Tparallel > 1 and if this anisotropy is sufficiently large, large-amplitude Alfven waves with arbitrary polarizations can arise. Simulation results show that an amplitude of the excited Alfven waves increases as the temperature anisotropy increases. Nonlinear evolution of the large-amplitude Alfven waves causes magnetic trapping, which could provide the saturation mechanism. After saturation, the initial bi-Maxwellian distribution of particles still remains and a residual temperature anisotropy persists long, at least on the time scale of simulations. (author)