Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2013
A relativistically hot electron, positron and ion (e–p–i) plasma relaxes to a triple curl Beltrami (TCB) field. The TCB field being the superposition of three Beltrami fields is characterized by three scale parameters and hence there exist multiscale structures in the system. It is shown that temperatures of the plasma constituents strongly affect the scale parameters. Generally, the scale parameters associated with the TCB field may be a combination of real and complex roots. The numerical results show that for given Beltrami parameters, an increase in the thermal energy of plasma particles could transform the real eigenvalues to complex ones. It is also observed that one component is more strongly affected relative to other components on increasing temperatures of plasma species. Two different vortices become the same at higher thermal energies. This suggests that it is possible to create high β (kinetic to magnetic pressure ratio) and fully diamagnetic plasma configurations. The study has a potential relevance to space, astrophysics and laboratory plasmas.