Related papers: Kinetic dissipation and anisotropic heating in a t…
In this paper we investigate the transport of energetic particles in turbulent plasmas. A numerical approach is used to simulate the effect of the background plasma on the motion of energetic protons. The background plasma is in a…
We study processes at the transition region between hot (rare) and cold (dense) plasma in the collisionless regime. We use a 3-dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell (3-D PIC) relativistic code. Motivated by the transition region in…
I present a review of incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in a strongly magnetised plasma. The approach is phenomenological even where a more rigorous theory is available, so that a reader armed with paper, pencil and some…
We discuss electron acceleration and heating during collisionless magnetic reconnection by using the results of implicit kinetic simulations of Harris current sheets. We consider and compare electron dynamics in plasmas with different \beta…
We perform direct numerical simulations of quasi-static magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, and compute various energy transfers including the ring-to-ring and conical energy transfers, and the energy fluxes of the perpendicular and parallel…
The problem of the linear microtearing mode in a slab magnetised plasma, and its connection to kinetic reconnecting modes, is addressed. Electrons are described using a novel hybrid fluid-kinetic model that captures electron heating, ions…
Direct numerical simulations of two-dimensional decaying MHD turbulence in bounded domains show the rapid generation of angular momentum in nonaxisymmetric geometries. It is found that magnetic fluctuations enhance this mechanism. On a…
Recent fully nonlinear, kinetic three-dimensional simulations of magnetic reconnection [Daughton et al. 2011] evolve structures and exhibit dynamics on multiple scales, in a manner reminiscent of turbulence. These simulations of…
Observational evidence in space and astrophysical plasmas with long collisional mean free path suggests that more massive charged particles may be preferentially heated. One possible mechanism for this is the turbulent cascade of energy…
The heating, acceleration, and pitch-angle scattering of charged particles by MHD turbulence are important in a wide range of astrophysical environments, including the solar wind, accreting black holes, and galaxy clusters. We simulate the…
We present a new global model of the solar corona, including the low corona, the transition region and the top of chromosphere. The realistic 3D magnetic field is simulated using the data from the photospheric magnetic field measurements.…
Understanding the conditions conducive to particle acceleration at collisionless, non-relativistic shocks is important for the origin of cosmic rays. We use hybrid (kinetic ions -- fluid electrons) kinetic simulations to investigate…
We perform fully-kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of an hot plasma that expands radially in a cylindrical geometry. The aim of the paper is to study the consequent development of the electron temperature anisotropy in an expanding…
The plasma heating during collisionless magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations. We analyze the time evolution of the plasma temperature associated with the motion of the reconnecting flux tube, where the…
Simulations of decaying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence are performed with a fluid and a kinetic code. The initial condition is an ensemble of long-wavelength, counter-propagating, shear-Alfv\'{e}n waves, which interact and rapidly…
Dynamics of the magnetospheric plasma configuration intrinsically features intermittent slow and fast phases. The fast transition is a nonlinear process, loss of equilibrium which ends up the slow quasi-static evolution. The process is…
Protons in the solar corona and heliosphere exhibit anisotropic velocity distributions, violation of magnetic moment conservation, and a general lack of thermal equilibrium with the other particle species. There is no agreement about the…
The topological and dynamical features of small scales are studied in the context of decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulent flows using direct numerical simulations. Joint probability density functions (PDFs) of the invariants of gradient…
Shockwaves in plasma are usually dealt with using Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Yet, MHD entails the assumption of a short mean free path, which is not fulfilled in a collisionless plasma. Recently, for pair plasmas, we devised a model…
We present a theoretical framework for plasma turbulence in astrophysical plasmas (solar wind, interstellar medium, galaxy clusters, accretion disks). The key assumptions are that the turbulence is anisotropic with respect to the mean…