Dependence of Kinetic Plasma Turbulence on Plasma beta
Space Physics
2018-09-19 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies
Plasma Physics
Abstract
We study the effects of plasma \b{eta} (ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure) on the evolution of kinetic plasma turbulence using fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of decaying turbulence. We find that the plasma \b{eta} systematically affects spectra, measures of intermittency, decay rates of turbulence fluctuations, and partitioning over different channels of energy exchange More specifically, an increase in plasma \b{eta} leads to greater total heating, with proton heating preferentially more than electrons. Implications for achieving magnetosheath like temperature ratios are discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.11371,
title = {Dependence of Kinetic Plasma Turbulence on Plasma beta},
author = {Tulasi N. Parashar and William H. Matthaeus and Michael A Shay},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.11371},
year = {2018}
}