Multiscale structures in relativistic pair plasmas

The steady-state solution of a pair plasma with relativistic thermal velocity of the constituent particles (electrons and positrons) is investigated. The relaxed state can be written as a superposition of three Beltrami fields. Generally, the associated scale parameters could be a complex conjugate pair and a real one. It is shown that at higher thermal energies, all the scale parameters become real. It is also observed that one component gets a large scale (system size) while the other two components appear with small scale of the order of the skin depth at relativistic temperature. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.