Abstract

We use a kinetic treatment to study the linear transverse dispersion relation for a magnetized isotropic relativistic electron-positron plasma with finite relativistic temperature. The explicit linear dispersion relation for electromagnetic waves propagating along a constant background magnetic field is presented, including an analytical continuation to the whole complex frequency plane for the case of Maxwell-Juttner velocity distribution functions. This dispersion relation is studied numerically for various temperatures. For left-handed solutions, the system presents two branches, the electromagnetic ordinary mode and the Alfven mode. In the low frequency regime, the Alfven branch has two dispersive zones, the normal zone (where partial derivative omega/partial derivative k > 0) and an anomalous zone (where partial derivative x/partial derivative k < 0). We find that in the anomalous zone of the Alfven branch, the electromagnetic waves are damped, and there is a maximum wave number for which the Alfven branch is suppressed. We also study the dependence of the Alfven velocity and effective plasma frequency with the temperature. We complemented the analytical and numerical approaches with relativistic full particle simulations, which consistently agree with the analytical results. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.