Fast magnetic field amplification in the early Universe: growth of
  collisionless plasma instabilities in turbulent media
  In this work we report a numerical study of the cosmic magnetic field
amplification due to collisionless plasma instabilities. The collisionless
magnetohydrodynamic equations derived account for the pressure anisotropy that
leads, in specific conditions, to the firehose and mirror instabilities. We
study the time evolution of seed fields in turbulence under the influence of
such instabilities. An approximate analytical time evolution of magnetic field
is provided. The numerical simulations and the analytical predictions are
compared. We found that i) amplification of magnetic field was efficient in
firehose unstable turbulent regimes, but not in the mirror unstable models, ii)
the growth rate of the magnetic energy density is much faster than the
turbulent dynamo, iii) the efficient amplification occurs at small scales. The
analytical prediction for the correlation between the growth timescales with
pressure anisotropy ratio is confirmed by the numerical simulations. These
results reinforce the idea that pressure anisotropies - driven naturally in a
turbulent collisionless medium, e.g. the intergalactic medium -, could
efficiently amplify the magnetic field in the early Universe
(post-recombination era), previous to the collapse of the first large-scale
gravitational structures. This mechanism, though fast for the small scale
fields ($\sim$kpc scales), is however unable to provide relatively strong
magnetic fields at large scales. Other mechanisms that were not accounted here
(e.g., collisional turbulence once instabilities are quenched, velocity shear,
or gravitationally induced inflows of gas into galaxies and clusters) could
operate afterwards to build up large scale coherent field structures in the
long time evolution.
