Effect of small-scale temperature modulation on magnetic field generation in laser plasmas

The generation of d.c. magnetic fields in electron time scale in the presence of small-scale temperature modulation is considered. It is shown that (i) the modulation leads to the growth of large-scale magnetic field, and (ii) the amplitude of this field as a function of the modulation amplitude M reaches its maximum at M ~ (kL)−1, where k is the modulation wavenumber and L is the spatial scale of the average temperature profile.