Electromagnetic ion beam instabilities - Hot beams at interplanetary shocks

This paper considers Vlasov instabilities driven by a very hot ion beam streaming parallel to a magnetic field. The linear theory of electromagnetic instabilities driven by such a beam in a homogeneous, collisionless, nonrelativistic plasma is used. Numerical solutions of the full linear dispersion equation for bi-Maxwellian distribution functions are presented. If the thermal speed of the beam is greater than its drift speed, the two dominant modes are the right-hand and left-hand resonant ion beam instabilities. The parametric dependencies of the threshold drift speeds and growth rates for both modes are presented. In particular, the thresholds are shown to be sensitive functions of the beam temperature anisotropies. Arguments are presented that these two modes are driven by the suprathermal ion component at interplanetary shocks, and that the growth of these modes is sufficient to account for the amplitudes of MHD-like waves observed at such shocks.