Plasma blobs are observed to be weak density enhancements as radially-stretched structures emerging from the cusps of quiescent coronal streamers. In this paper, it is suggested that the formation of blobs is a consequence of an intrinsic instability of coronal streamers occurring at a very localized region around the cusp. The evolutionary process of the instability, as revealed in our calcula...

An invited Perspective to mark the election of the author to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 2014. Explosive instability and erupting flux tubes in a magnetized plasma S. C. Cowley1,2, B. Cowley3, S. A. Henneberg4 and H. R. Wilson4 1CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB, UK 2Department of Physics, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ, UK 3Department of Phy...

Relativistic shocks are usually thought to occur in violent astrophysical explosions. These collisionless shocks are mediated by a plasma kinetic streaming instability, often loosely referred to as the Weibel instability, which generates strong magnetic fields “from scratch" very efficiently. In this review paper we discuss the shock micro-physics and present a recent model of “pre-conditioning...

We investigate the linear dynamics of an electromagnetic field propagating in curved spacetime presence plasma. The dynamical equations are generically more involved and richer than effective Proca equation adopted as a model previous work. discuss general focus on case cold plasma background spherically-symmetric black hole, showing that system admits plasma-driven, quasibound states prone to ...