Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
We describe a model for first stage electron acceleration based on quasi-linear interaction with Langmuir waves. The acceleration takes place in a MHD-unstable plasma region (length L, volume V) that contains many microscopically unstable current layers, which act as (quasi-stationary) sources of Langmuir waves, Figure 1. Our work does not depend on the details of the generation mechanism for Langmuir waves, nor on the details of the MHD instability. For the latter, one could think of multiple tearing instabilities.