Related papers: A thermally stable heating mechanism for the intra…
Through the process of inward diffusion, a strongly localized clump of plasma is created in a magnetosphere. The creation of the density gradient, instead of the usual flattening by a diffusion process, can be explained by the topological…
Pressure anisotropy can strongly influence the dynamics of weakly collisional, high-beta plasmas, but its effects are missed by standard magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Small changes to the magnetic-field strength generate large…
Cluster plasmas are magnetised already at very low magnetic field strength. Low collisionality implies that conservation of the first adiabatic invariant results in an anisotropic viscous stress (Braginskii viscosity) or, equivalently,…
We use the machinery usually employed for studying the onset of Rayleigh--B\'enard convection in hydro- and magnetohydro-dynamic settings to address the onset of convection induced by the magnetothermal instability and the…
At kinetic scales in the solar wind, instabilities transfer energy from particles to fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields while restoring plasma conditions towards thermodynamic equilibrium. We investigate the interplay between…
We report the results of a local stability analysis for a magnetized, gravitationally stratified plasma containing cosmic rays. We account for cosmic-ray diffusion and thermal conduction parallel to the magnetic field and allow beta to take…
Unopposed radiative cooling in clusters of galaxies results in excessive mass deposition rates. However, the cool cores of galaxy clusters are continuously heated by thermal conduction and turbulent heat diffusion due to minor mergers or…
(abridged) The ICM has been suggested to be buoyantly unstable in the presence of magnetic field and anisotropic thermal conduction. We perform first cosmological simulations of galaxy cluster formation that simultaneously include magnetic…
Plasma in the terrestrial magnetosheath is characterised by very weak particle-particle collisions, so kinetic microinstabilities are thought to be responsible for regulating the thermodynamics of the plasma. By exciting electromagnetic…
How thermal equilibrium is determined in a weakly collisional plasma is a fundamental question in plasma physics. This letter shows that the turbulence driven by the magnetic curvature and density gradient tends to equilibrate the…
Observations of clusters and groups imply that such halos are roughly in global thermal equilibrium, with heating balancing cooling when averaged over sufficiently long time- and length-scales; the ICM is, however, very likely to be locally…
(abridged) Uninhibited radiative cooling in clusters of galaxies would lead to excessive mass accretion rates contrary to observations. One of the key proposals to offset radiative energy losses is thermal conduction from outer, hotter…
Magnetic flux tubes such as those in the solar corona are subject to a number of instabilities. Important among them is the kink instability which plays a central part in the nanoflare theory of coronal heating, and for this reason in…
Thermal instability in an electron-ion magnetized plasma, which is relevant in the intragalactic medium (IGM) of galaxy clusters, solar corona, and other two-component plasma objects is investigated. We apply the multicomponent plasma…
A connection between kinetic processes and intermittent turbulence is observed in the solar wind plasma using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. In particular, kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating…
Weakly collisional space plasmas are rarely in local thermal equilibrium and often exhibit non-Maxwellian electron and ion velocity distributions that lead to the growth of microinstabilities, that is, enhanced electric and magnetic fields…
We use three-dimensional MHD simulations with anisotropic thermal conduction to study turbulence due to the magnetothermal instability (MTI) in the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters. The MTI grows on timescales of ~1 Gyr and is…
In low collisionality plasmas heat flows almost exclusively along magnetic field lines, and the condition for stability to convection is modified from the standard Schwarzschild criterion. We present local two and three-dimensional…
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…
Context. Amongst many plasma processes potentially relevant to the dynamics of the intracluster medium (ICM), turbulence driven at observable scales by internal magnetised buoyancy instabilities like the magneto-thermal instability (MTI)…