Related papers: Nonlinear Simulations of the Heat Flux Driven Buoy…
We study the effects of anisotropic thermal conduction on low-collisionality, astrophysical plasmas using two and three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations. For weak magnetic fields, dilute plasmas are buoyantly unstable for either…
The role played by magnetic fields in the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters is complex. The weakly collisional nature of the ICM leads to thermal conduction that is channelled along field lines. This anisotropic heat conduction…
In this paper we investigate how convective instabilities influence heat conduction in the intracluster medium (ICM) of cool-core galaxy clusters. The ICM is a high-beta, weakly collisional plasma in which the transport of momentum and heat…
I calculate the linear stability of a stratified low collisionality plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field. Heat is assumed to flow only along magnetic field lines. In the absence of a heat flux in the background plasma, Balbus…
We examine the long-standing cooling flow problem in galaxy clusters with 3D MHD simulations of isolated clusters including radiative cooling and anisotropic thermal conduction along magnetic field lines. The central regions of the…
The intracluster medium of galaxy clusters is a weakly collisional, high-beta plasma in which the transport of heat and momentum occurs primarily along magnetic-field lines. Anisotropic heat conduction allows convective instabilities to be…
We perform a suite of simulations of cooling cores in clusters of galaxies in order to investigate the effect of the recently discovered heat flux buoyancy instability (HBI) on the evolution of cores. Our models follow the 3-dimensional…
In many magnetized, dilute astrophysical plasmas, thermal conduction occurs almost exclusively parallel to magnetic field lines. In this case, the usual stability criterion for convective stability, the Schwarzschild criterion, which…
In dilute astrophysical plasmas, thermal conduction is primarily along magnetic field lines, and therefore highly anisotropic. As a result, the usual convective stability criterion is modified from a condition on entropy to a condition on…
In the outskirts of the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters, the temperature decreases with radius. Due to the weakly collisional nature of the plasma, these regions are susceptible to the magneto-thermal instability (MTI), which…
In weakly magnetized, dilute plasmas in which thermal conduction along magnetic field lines is important, the usual convective stability criterion is modified. Instead of depending on entropy gradients, instability occurs for small…
We analyze the linear stability of a dilute, hot plasma, taking into account the effects of stratification and anisotropic thermal conduction. The work is motivated by attempts to understand the dynamics of the intracluster medium in galaxy…
The regulation of electron heat transport in high-beta, weakly collisional, magnetized plasma is investigated. A temperature gradient oriented along a mean magnetic field can induce a kinetic heat-flux-driven whistler instability (HWI),…
The heat transport in the solar wind is dominated by the suprathermal electron populations, i.e., a tenuous halo and a field-aligned beam/strahl, with high energies and antisunward drifts along the magnetic field. Their evolution may offer…
Using a linear stability analysis and two and three-dimensional nonlinear simulations, we study the physics of buoyancy instabilities in a combined thermal and relativistic (cosmic ray) plasma, motivated by the application to clusters of…
X-ray observations of hot gas in galaxy clusters often show steeper temperature gradients across cold fronts -- contact discontinuities, driven by the differential gas motions. These sharp (a few kpc wide) surface brightness/temperature…
Determining the origin of turbulence in galaxy clusters, and quantifying its transport of heat, is an outstanding problem, with implications for our understanding of their thermodynamic history and structure. As the dilute plasma of the…
The role of thermal conduction in regulating the thermal behavior of cooling flows in galaxy clusters is reexamined. Recent investigations have shown that the anisotropic Coulomb heat flux caused by a magnetic field in a dilute plasma…
The hot and dilute intracluster medium (ICM) plays a central role in many key processes that shape galaxy clusters.Nevertheless, the nature of plasma turbulence and particle transport in the ICM remain poorly understood, and quantifying the…
Over the last decade, substantial efforts have been devoted to understanding the stability properties, transport phenomena, and long-term evolution of weakly-collisional, magnetized plasmas which are stratified in temperature. These studies…