4,660 research outputs found
The Heating of Test Particles in Numerical Simulations of Alfvenic Turbulence
We study the heating of charged test particles in three-dimensional numerical
simulations of weakly compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence
(``Alfvenic turbulence''); these results are relevant to particle heating and
acceleration in the solar wind, solar flares, accretion disks onto black holes,
and other astrophysics and heliospheric environments. The physics of particle
heating depends on whether the gyrofrequency of a particle is comparable to the
frequency of a turbulent fluctuation that is resolved on the computational
domain. Particles with these frequencies nearly equal undergo strong
perpendicular heating (relative to the local magnetic field) and pitch angle
scattering. By contrast, particles with large gyrofrequency undergo strong
parallel heating. Simulations with a finite resistivity produce additional
parallel heating due to parallel electric fields in small-scale current sheets.
Many of our results are consistent with linear theory predictions for the
particle heating produced by the Alfven and slow magnetosonic waves that make
up Alfvenic turbulence. However, in contrast to linear theory predictions,
energy exchange is not dominated by discrete resonances between particles and
waves; instead, the resonances are substantially ``broadened.'' We discuss the
implications of our results for solar and astrophysics problems, in particular
the thermodynamics of the near-Earth solar wind. We conclude that Alfvenic
turbulence produces significant parallel heating via the interaction between
particles and magnetic field compressions (``slow waves''). However, on scales
above the proton Larmor radius, Alfvenic turbulence does not produce
significant perpendicular heating of protons or minor ions.Comment: Submitted to Ap
Error analysis for full discretizations of quasilinear parabolic problems on evolving surfaces
Convergence results are shown for full discretizations of quasilinear
parabolic partial differential equations on evolving surfaces. As a
semidiscretization in space the evolving surface finite element method is
considered, using a regularity result of a generalized Ritz map, optimal order
error estimates for the spatial discretization is shown. Combining this with
the stability results for Runge--Kutta and BDF time integrators, we obtain
convergence results for the fully discrete problems.Comment: -. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1410.048
Contributions of plasma physics to chaos and nonlinear dynamics
This topical review focusses on the contributions of plasma physics to chaos
and nonlinear dynamics bringing new methods which are or can be used in other
scientific domains. It starts with the development of the theory of Hamiltonian
chaos, and then deals with order or quasi order, for instance adiabatic and
soliton theories. It ends with a shorter account of dissipative and high
dimensional Hamiltonian dynamics, and of quantum chaos. Most of these
contributions are a spin-off of the research on thermonuclear fusion by
magnetic confinement, which started in the fifties. Their presentation is both
exhaustive and compact. [15 April 2016
Approximation of empowerment in the continuous domain
The empowerment formalism offers a goal-independent utility function fully derived from an agent's embodiment. It produces intrinsic motivations which can be used to generate self-organizing behaviours in agents. One obstacle to the application of empowerment in more demanding (esp. continuous) domains is that previous ways of calculating empowerment have been very time consuming and only provided a proof-of-concept. In this paper we present a new approach to efficiently approximate empowerment as a parallel, linear, Gaussian channel capacity problem. We use pendulum balancing to demonstrate this new method, and compare it to earlier approximation methods.Peer reviewe
Self-inhibiting thermal conduction in high-beta, whistler-unstable plasma
A heat flux in a high- plasma with low collisionality triggers the
whistler instability. Quasilinear theory predicts saturation of the instability
in a marginal state characterized by a heat flux that is fully controlled by
electron scattering off magnetic perturbations. This marginal heat flux does
not depend on the temperature gradient and scales as . We confirm this
theoretical prediction by performing numerical particle-in-cell simulations of
the instability. We further calculate the saturation level of magnetic
perturbations and the electron scattering rate as functions of and the
temperature gradient to identify the saturation mechanism as quasilinear.
Suppression of the heat flux is caused by oblique whistlers with
magnetic-energy density distributed over a wide range of propagation angles.
This result can be applied to high- astrophysical plasmas, such as the
intracluster medium, where thermal conduction at sharp temperature gradients
along magnetic-field lines can be significantly suppressed. We provide a
convenient expression for the amount of suppression of the heat flux relative
to the classical Spitzer value as a function of the temperature gradient and
. For a turbulent plasma, the additional independent suppression by the
mirror instability is capable of producing large total suppression factors
(several tens in galaxy clusters) in regions with strong temperature gradients.Comment: accepted to JP
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