English

Pressure-Strain Interaction: II. Decomposition in Magnetic Field-Aligned Coordinates

Plasma Physics 2023-01-04 v1 Fluid Dynamics Space Physics

Abstract

In weakly collisional and collisionless magnetized plasmas, the pressure-strain interaction describes the rate of conversion between bulk flow and thermal energy density. In this study, we derive an analytical expression for the pressure-strain interaction in a coordinate system with an axis aligned with the local magnetic field. The result is eight groups of terms corresponding to different physical mechanisms that can contribute to the pressure-strain interaction. We provide a physical description of each term. The results are immediately of interest to weakly collisional and collisionless magnetized plasmas and the fundamental processes that happen therein, including magnetic reconnection, magnetized plasma turbulence, and collisionless shocks. The terms in the field-aligned coordinate decomposition are likely accessible to measurement with satellite observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.13161,
  title  = {Pressure-Strain Interaction: II. Decomposition in Magnetic Field-Aligned Coordinates},
  author = {Paul A. Cassak and M. Hasan Barbhuiya and H. Arthur Weldon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.13161},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

12 pages, 1 figure, accepted to Physics of Plasmas

R2 v1 2026-06-28T06:42:05.198Z