Structure of Plasma Heating in Gyrokinetic Alfvénic Turbulence

We analyze plasma heating in weakly collisional kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence using high resolution gyrokinetic simulations spanning the range of scales between the ion and the electron gyroradii. Real space structures that have a higher than average heating rate are shown not to be confined to cur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2016-12, Vol.117 (24), p.245101-245101, Article 245101
Main Authors: Navarro, Alejandro Bañón, Teaca, Bogdan, Told, Daniel, Groselj, Daniel, Crandall, Paul, Jenko, Frank
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Current sheets
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Heating
Plasma heating
Spacecraft
Turbulence
Turbulent flow
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Summary:We analyze plasma heating in weakly collisional kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence using high resolution gyrokinetic simulations spanning the range of scales between the ion and the electron gyroradii. Real space structures that have a higher than average heating rate are shown not to be confined to current sheets. This novel result is at odds with previous studies, which use the electromagnetic work in the local electron fluid frame, i.e., J·(E+v_{e}×B), as a proxy for turbulent dissipation to argue that heating follows the intermittent spatial structure of the electric current. Furthermore, we show that electrons are dominated by parallel heating while the ions prefer the perpendicular heating route. We comment on the implications of the results presented here.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.245101