Abstract

In collision-poor plasmas from space, e.g. solar wind, terrestrial magnetospheres, kinetic instabilities are expected to play a major role in constraining the temperature anisotropy of plasma particles, but a definitive answer can be given only after ascertaining their properties in these environments. This study describes the full spectrum of electron firehose instabilities in the presence of suprathermal electron populations which are ubiquitous in space plasmas. Suprathermal electrons stimulate both the periodic and aperiodic branches, remarkable being the effects shown by the aperiodic mode propagating obliquely to the ambient magnetic field which markedly exceeds the growth rates of the parallel (periodic) branch reported recently in Lazar et al. Derived exclusively in terms of the plasma parameters, the anisotropy thresholds of this instability are also lowered in the presence of suprathermal electrons, predicting an enhanced effectiveness in the solar wind conditions. These results may also be relevant in various other astrophysical contexts where the firehose instabilities involve, e.g. solar flares, sites of magnetic field reconnection, accretion flows or plasma jets leading to shocks and co-rotating interactions in the heliosphere, interstellar medium, and Galaxy clusters.