Electrostatic instabilities in plasmas with two electron components

This paper considers the linear theory of electrostatic Vlasov instabilities driven by the relative drift between two Maxwellian electron components in an unmagnetized, homogeneous plasma bearing zero current. The dispersion properties, threshold drift speeds, and growth rates of the electron beam instability, the conventional ion acoustic instability, and the ion acoustic beam instability are compared in detailed parametric studies. A new way of illustrating the parameter regimes in which each of these three instabilities has the lowest threshold drift speed is demonstrated. This leads to clearly illustrated criteria for determining when enhanced electrostatic fluctuations between the ion and electron plasma frequencies may be observed in plasmas with two electron components. In the case of a hot beam this criterion is a beam density nb which satisfies 0.05 ≲ nb/ne ≲ 0.30 where ne is the total electron density.