  Properties of the electron mirror instability and its competition with the
usually dominant whistler (electron cyclotron) instability driven by the
electron perpendicular temperature anisotropy are investigated on the linear
level using a Vlasov linear solver and on the nonlinear level using a
two-dimensional full particle code. The simulation results show that the
linearly subdominant electron mirror instability may compete on the nonlinear
level with the whistler instability and may even become eventually the dominant
mode that generates robust non-propagating sub-ion-scale coherent structures in
the form of magnetic peaks.
