44 research outputs found
Kinetic Turbulence
The weak collisionality typical of turbulence in many diffuse astrophysical
plasmas invalidates an MHD description of the turbulent dynamics, motivating
the development of a more comprehensive theory of kinetic turbulence. In
particular, a kinetic approach is essential for the investigation of the
physical mechanisms responsible for the dissipation of astrophysical turbulence
and the resulting heating of the plasma. This chapter reviews the limitations
of MHD turbulence theory and explains how kinetic considerations may be
incorporated to obtain a kinetic theory for astrophysical plasma turbulence.
Key questions about the nature of kinetic turbulence that drive current
research efforts are identified. A comprehensive model of the kinetic turbulent
cascade is presented, with a detailed discussion of each component of the model
and a review of supporting and conflicting theoretical, numerical, and
observational evidence.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 99 references, Chapter 6 in A. Lazarian et al.
(eds.), Magnetic Fields in Diffuse Media, Astrophysics and Space Science
Library 407, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg (2015
Magnetic fields in cosmic particle acceleration sources
We review here some magnetic phenomena in astrophysical particle accelerators
associated with collisionless shocks in supernova remnants, radio galaxies and
clusters of galaxies. A specific feature is that the accelerated particles can
play an important role in magnetic field evolution in the objects. We discuss a
number of CR-driven, magnetic field amplification processes that are likely to
operate when diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) becomes efficient and
nonlinear. The turbulent magnetic fields produced by these processes determine
the maximum energies of accelerated particles and result in specific features
in the observed photon radiation of the sources. Equally important, magnetic
field amplification by the CR currents and pressure anisotropies may affect the
shocked gas temperatures and compression, both in the shock precursor and in
the downstream flow, if the shock is an efficient CR accelerator. Strong
fluctuations of the magnetic field on scales above the radiation formation
length in the shock vicinity result in intermittent structures observable in
synchrotron emission images. Resonant and non-resonant CR streaming
instabilities in the shock precursor can generate mesoscale magnetic fields
with scale-sizes comparable to supernova remnants and even superbubbles. This
opens the possibility that magnetic fields in the earliest galaxies were
produced by the first generation Population III supernova remnants and by
clustered supernovae in star forming regions.Comment: 30 pages, Space Science Review
Large-Eddy Simulations of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence in Heliophysics and Astrophysics
We live in an age in which high-performance computing is transforming the way we do science. Previously intractable problems are now becoming accessible by means of increasingly realistic numerical simulations. One of the most enduring and most challenging of these problems is turbulence. Yet, despite these advances, the extreme parameter regimes encountered in space physics and astrophysics (as in atmospheric and oceanic physics) still preclude direct numerical simulation. Numerical models must take a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach, explicitly computing only a fraction of the active dynamical scales. The success of such an approach hinges on how well the model can represent the subgrid-scales (SGS) that are not explicitly resolved. In addition to the parameter regime, heliophysical and astrophysical applications must also face an equally daunting challenge: magnetism. The presence of magnetic fields in a turbulent, electrically conducting fluid flow can dramatically alter the coupling between large and small scales, with potentially profound implications for LES/SGS modeling. In this review article, we summarize the state of the art in LES modeling of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) ows. After discussing the nature of MHD turbulence and the small-scale processes that give rise to energy dissipation, plasma heating, and magnetic reconnection, we consider how these processes may best be captured within an LES/SGS framework. We then consider several special applications in heliophysics and astrophysics, assessing triumphs, challenges,and future directions
Determining Threshold Instrumental Resolutions for Resolving the Velocity‐Space Signature of Ion Landau Damping
Unraveling the physics of the entire turbulent cascade of energy in space and astrophysical plasmas from the injection of energy at large scales to the dissipation of that energy into plasma heat at small scales, represents an overarching, open question in heliophysics and astrophysics. The fast cadence and high phase-space resolution of particle velocity distribution measurements on modern spacecraft missions, such as the recently launched Parker Solar Probe, presents exciting new opportunities for identifying turbulent dissipation mechanisms using in situ measurements of the particle velocity distributions and electromagnetic fields. Here we demonstrate how to use data from kinetic numerical simulations of plasma turbulence to create synthetic spacecraft data; this data set can then be used to determine instrumental requirements to identify specific particle energization mechanisms. Using such synthetic data, downsampled to the velocity phase-space resolution available from the plasma instruments on several past and present missions, we compute the resulting velocity-space signature of ion Landau damping using the recently developed Field-Particle Correlation (FPC) technique. We find that only recent missions have sufficiently fine phase-space resolution to resolve the characteristic resonant features of the ion Landau damping signature. Coupled with numerical determinations of the velocity-space signatures of different proposed particle energization mechanisms, this strategy enables the specification of instrumental capabilities required to achieve science goals on the topic of plasma heating and particle acceleration in turbulent heliospheric plasmas. © 2021. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.6 month embargo; published online: 10 May 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
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Determining Threshold Instrumental Resolutions for Resolving the Velocity-Space Signature of Ion Landau Damping
Unraveling the physics of the entire turbulent cascade of energy in space and astrophysical plasmas from the injection of energy at large scales to the dissipation of that energy into plasma heat at small scales, represents an overarching, open question in heliophysics and astrophysics. The fast cadence and high phase-space resolution of particle velocity distribution measurements on modern spacecraft missions, such as the recently launched Parker Solar Probe, presents exciting new opportunities for identifying turbulent dissipation mechanisms using in situ measurements of the particle velocity distributions and electromagnetic fields. Here we demonstrate how to use data from kinetic numerical simulations of plasma turbulence to create synthetic spacecraft data; this data set can then be used to determine instrumental requirements to identify specific particle energization mechanisms. Using such synthetic data, downsampled to the velocity phase-space resolution available from the plasma instruments on several past and present missions, we compute the resulting velocity-space signature of ion Landau damping using the recently developed Field-Particle Correlation (FPC) technique. We find that only recent missions have sufficiently fine phase-space resolution to resolve the characteristic resonant features of the ion Landau damping signature. Coupled with numerical determinations of the velocity-space signatures of different proposed particle energization mechanisms, this strategy enables the specification of instrumental capabilities required to achieve science goals on the topic of plasma heating and particle acceleration in turbulent heliospheric plasmas. © 2021. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.6 month embargo; published online: 10 May 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
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PATCH: Particle Arrival Time Correlation for Heliophysics
The ability to understand the fundamental nature of the physics that governs the heliosphere requires spacecraft instrumentation to measure energy transfer at kinetic scales. This translates to a time cadence resolving the proton kinetic timescales, typically of the order of the proton gyrofrequency. The downlinked survey-mode data from modern spacecraft are often much lower resolution than this criterion, meaning that the higher resolution, burst-mode data must be captured to study an event at kinetic time scales. Telemetry restrictions, however, prohibit a sizable fraction of this burst-mode data from being downlinked to the ground. The field-particle correlation (FPC) technique can quantify kinetic-scale energy transfer between electromagnetic fields and charged particles and identify the mechanisms responsible for mediating the transfer. In this study, we adapt the FPC technique for calculating wave-particle energy transfer onboard modern spacecraft using time-tagged particle counts simultaneous with electromagnetic field measurements. The newly developed procedure, called Particle Arrival Time Correlation for Heliophysics (PATCH), is tested using synthetic spacecraft data, where output from a gyrokinetic plasma turbulence simulation was downsampled to Parker Solar Probe (PSP) energy-angle resolution. We assess the ability of the PATCH algorithm to recover the qualitative and quantitative features of the resulting velocity-space signatures, such as ion-Landau damping, that can be used to distinguish different kinetic mechanisms of particle energization. Ultimately, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept that the PATCH method could enable calculations of onboard wave-particle correlations, with the intent of enhancing spacecraft data return by several orders of magnitude. © 2021. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.6 month embargo; published online: 10 May 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
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Astrophysical Gyrokinetics: Kinetic and Fluid Turbulent Cascades In Magentized Weakly Collisional Plasmas
This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding plasma turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. It is motivated by observations of electromagnetic and density fluctuations in the solar wind, interstellar medium and galaxy clusters, as well as by models of particle heating in accretion disks. All of these plasmas and many others have turbulentmotions at weakly collisional and collisionless scales. The paper focuses on turbulence in a strong mean magnetic field. The key assumptions are that the turbulent fluctuations are small compared to the mean field, spatially anisotropic with respect to it and that their frequency is low compared to the ion cyclotron frequency. The turbulence is assumed to be forced at some system-specific outer scale. The energy injected at this scale has to be dissipated into heat, which ultimately cannot be accomplished without collisions. A kinetic cascade develops that brings the energy to collisional scales both in space and velocity. The nature of the kinetic cascade in various scale ranges depends on the physics of plasma fluctuations that exist there. There are four special scales that separate physically distinct regimes: the electron and ion gyroscales, the mean free path and the electron diffusion scale. In each of the scale ranges separated by these scales, the fully kinetic problem is systematically reduced to a more physically transparent and computationally tractable system of equations, which are derived in a rigorous way. In the "inertial range" above the ion gyroscale, the kinetic cascade separates into two parts: a cascade of Alfvenic fluctuations and a passive cascade of density and magnetic-fieldstrength fluctuations. The former are governed by the Reduced Magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) equations at both the collisional and collisionless scales; the latter obey a linear kinetic equation along the (moving) field lines associated with the Alfvenic component (in the collisional limit, these compressive fluctuations become the slow and entropy modes of the conventional MHD). In the "dissipation range" below ion gyroscale, there are again two cascades: the kinetic-Alfven-wave (KAW) cascade governed by two fluid-like Electron Reduced Magnetohydrodynamic (ERMHD) equations and a passive cascade of ion entropy fluctuations both in space and velocity. The latter cascade brings the energy of the inertial-range fluctuations that was Landau-damped at the ion gyroscale to collisional scales in the phase space and leads to ion heating. The KAWenergy is similarly damped at the electron gyroscale and converted into electron heat. Kolmogorov-style scaling relations are derived for all of these cascades. The relationship between the theoretical models proposed in this paper and astrophysical applications and observations is discussed in detail