Thermal disequilibration of ions and electrons by collisionless plasma turbulence

Does overall thermal equilibrium exist between ions and electrons in a weakly collisional, magnetised, turbulent plasma---and, if not, how is thermal energy partitioned between ions and electrons? This is a fundamental question in plasma physics, the answer to which is also crucial for predicting the properties of far-distant astronomical objects such as accretion discs around black holes. In the context of discs, this question was posed nearly two decades ago and has since generated a sizeable literature. Here we provide the answer for the case in which energy is injected into the plasma via Alfv\'enic turbulence: collisionless turbulent heating typically acts to disequilibrate the ion and electron temperatures. Numerical simulations using a hybrid fluid-gyrokinetic model indicate that the ion-electron heating-rate ratio is an increasing function of the thermal-to-magnetic energy ratio, $\beta_\mathrm{i}$: it ranges from $\sim0.05$ at $\beta_\mathrm{i}=0.1$ to at least $30$ for $\beta_\mathrm{i} \gtrsim 10$. This energy partition is approximately insensitive to the ion-to-electron temperature ratio $T_\mathrm{i}/T_\mathrm{e}$. Thus, in the absence of other equilibrating mechanisms, a collisionless plasma system heated via Alfv\'enic turbulence will tend towards a nonequilibrium state in which one of the species is significantly hotter than the other, viz., hotter ions at high $\beta_\mathrm{i}$, hotter electrons at low $\beta_\mathrm{i}$. Spectra of electromagnetic fields and the ion distribution function in 5D phase space exhibit an interesting new magnetically dominated regime at high $\beta_i$ and a tendency for the ion heating to be mediated by nonlinear phase mixing ("entropy cascade") when $\beta_\mathrm{i}\lesssim1$ and by linear phase mixing (Landau damping) when $\beta_\mathrm{i}\gg1

On the theory of microwave absorption by the spin-1/2 Heisenberg-Ising magnet

We analyze the problem of microwave absorption by the Heisenberg-Ising magnet in terms of shifted moments of the imaginary part of the dynamical susceptibility. When both, the Zeeman field and the wave vector of the incident microwave, are parallel to the anisotropy axis, the first four moments determine the shift of the resonance frequency and the line width in a situation where the frequency is varied for fixed Zeeman field. For the one-dimensional model we can calculate the moments exactly. This provides exact data for the resonance shift and the line width at arbitrary temperatures and magnetic fields. In current ESR experiments the Zeeman field is varied for fixed frequency. We show how in this situation the moments give perturbative results for the resonance shift and for the integrated intensity at small anisotropy as well as an explicit formula connecting the line width with the anisotropy parameter in the high-temperature limit.Comment: 4 page