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The current filamentation instability, which generically arises in thecounterstreaming of supersonic plasma flows, is known for its ability toconvert the free energy associated with anisotropic momentum distributions intokinetic-scale magnetic fields. The saturation of this instability has beenextensively studied in symmetric configurations where the interpenetratingplasmas share the same properties (velocity, density, temperature). In manyphysical settings, however, the most common configuration is that of asymmetricplasma flows. For instance, the precursor of relativistic collisionless shockwaves involves a hot, dilute beam of accelerated particles reflected at theshock front and a cold, dense inflowing background plasma. To determine theappropriate criterion for saturation in this case, we have performedlarge-scale 2D particle-in-cell simulations of counterstreamingelectron-positron pair and electron-ion plasmas. We show that, ininterpenetrating pair plasmas, the relevant criterion is that of magnetictrapping as applied to the component (beam or plasma) that carries the largerinertia of the two; namely, the instability growth suddenly slows down once thequiver frequency of those particles equals or exceeds the instability growthrate. We present theoretical approximations for the saturation level. Thesefindings remain valid for electron-ion plasmas provided that electrons and ionsare close to equipartition in the plasma flow of larger inertia. Our resultscan be directly applied to the physics of relativistic, weakly magnetized shockwaves, but they can also be generalized to other cases of study.

Saturation of the asymmetric current filamentation instability under conditions relevant to relativistic shock precursors