The Langmuir oscillations, Landau damping, and growing unstable modes in an electron-positron (EP) plasma are studied by using the Vlasov and Poisson's equations in the context of the Tsallis's nonextensive statistics. Logically, the properties of the Langmuir oscillations in a nonextensive EP plasma are remarkably modified in comparison with that of discussed in the Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics, i.e., the Maxwellian plasmas, because of the system under consideration is essentially a plasma system in a nonequilibrium stationary state with inhomogeneous temperature. It is found that by decreasing the nonextensivity index $q$ which corresponds to a plasma with excess superthermal particles, the phase velocity of the Langmuir waves increases. In particular, depend on the degree of nonextensivity, both of damped and growing oscillations are predicted in a collisionless EP plasma, arise from a resonance phenomena between the wave and the nonthermal particles of the system. Here, the mechanism leads to the unstable modes is established in the context of the nonextensive formalism yet the damping mechanism is the same developed by Landau. Furthermore, our results have the flexibility to reduce to the solutions of an equilibrium Maxwellian EP plasma (extensive limit $q\to 1$), in which the Langmuir waves are only the Landau damped modes.

• Received 13 January 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.053112