Related papers: Electron Heating in Quasi-Perpendicular Shocks
General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of black hole tilted disks -- where the angular momentum of the accretion flow at large distances is misaligned with respect to the black hole spin -- commonly display standing…
Thermal quench of a nearly collisionless plasma against a cooling boundary or region is an undesirable off-normal event in magnetic fusion experiments, but an ubiquitous process of cosmological importance in astrophysical plasmas. There is…
The analysis of Balmer-dominated optical spectra from non-radiative (adiabatic) SNRs has shown that the ratio of the electron to proton temperature temperature at the blast wave is close to unity at v_s <= 400 km/s, but declines sharply…
Particles are heated efficiently through energy conversion processes such as shocks and magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasma environments. While empirical scaling laws for the temperature increase have been obtained, the precise…
The physical processes behind astrophysical collisionless shocks, such as thermal relaxation and ionization after shock passage, remain poorly understood. To investigate these processes, we analyze the northeastern region of the Cygnus Loop…
Electron bulk heating during magnetic reconnection with symmetric inflow conditions is examined using kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The degree of electron heating is well correlated with the inflowing Alfv\'en speed $c_{Ar}$…
In systems accreting well below the Eddington rate, the plasma in the innermost regions of the disk is collisionless and two-temperature, with the ions hotter than the electrons. Yet, whether a collisionless faster-than-Coulomb energy…
Foreshock transients upstream of Earth's bow shock have been recently observed to accelerate electrons to many times their thermal energy. How such acceleration occurs is unknown, however. Using THEMIS case studies, we examine a subset of…
We investigate heating and acceleration of protons from a thermal gas with a generic diffusion and acceleration model, and subject to Coulomb scattering and energy loss, as was carried out in Petrosian & East (2008) for electrons. As…
Electrons in shocks are efficiently energized due to the cross-shock potential, which develops because of differential deflection of electrons and ions by the magnetic field in the shock front. The electron energization is necessarily…
We compute the transient dynamics of phonons in contact with high energy "hot" charge carriers in 12 polar and non-polar semiconductors, using a first-principles Boltzmann transport framework. For most materials, we find that the decay in…
Energetic electrons are a common feature of interplanetary shocks and planetary bow shocks, and they are invoked as a key component of models of nonthermal radio emission, such as solar radio bursts. A simulation study is carried out of…
Warming in complex physical systems, in particular global warming, attracts significant contemporary interest. It is essential, therefore, to understand basic physical mechanisms leading to overheating. It is well known that application of…
Electron bulk energization in the diffusion region during anti-parallel symmetric reconnection entails two stages. First, the inflowing electrons are adiabatically trapped and energized by an ambipolar parallel electric field. Next, the…
A central problem of space plasma physics is how protons and electrons are heated in a turbulent, magnetized plasma. The differential heating of charged species due to dissipation of turbulent fluctuations plays a key role in solar wind…
The energy partition in high Mach number collisionless shock waves is central to a wide range of high-energy astrophysical environments. We present a new theoretical model for electron heating that accounts for the energy exchange between…
Strongly magnetized plasmas, characterized by having a gyrofrequency larger than the plasma frequency ($\beta = \omega_c/\omega_p \gg 1$), are known to exhibit novel transport properties. Previous works studying pure electron plasmas have…
Large-amplitude electrostatic fluctuations are routinely observed by spacecraft upon traversal of collisionless shocks in the heliosphere. Kinetic simulations of shocks have struggled to reproduce the amplitude of such fluctuations,…
We investigate the electron heating dynamics in electropositive argon and helium capacitively coupled RF discharges driven at 13.56 MHz by Particle in Cell simulations and by an analytical model. The model allows to calculate the electric…
We investigate electron heating by magnetic-field-aligned electric fields ($E_\parallel$) during anti-parallel magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail. Using a statistical sample of 140 reconnection outflows, we infer the…