Related papers: Firehose and Mirror Instabilities in a Collisionle…
We study wave instability in an collisionless, rarefied hot plasma (e.g. solar wind or corona). We consider the anisotropy produced by the magnetic field, when the thermal gas pressures across and along the field become unequal. We apply…
We study the magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instability in relativistic collisionless plasma, as an astrophysical process for nonthermal particle acceleration. We consider dense plasma on top of a highly magnetized cavity with sheared magnetic…
Understanding magnetic-field generation and amplification in turbulent plasma is essential to account for observations of magnetic fields in the universe. A theoretical framework attributing the origin and sustainment of these fields to the…
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…
The non-thermal particles escaping from collisionless shocks into the surrounding medium can trigger a non-resonant streaming instability that converts parts of their drift kinetic energy into large amplitude magnetic field perturbations,…
Thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas in heavy-ion collisions is a difficult theoretical problem. One theoretical goal has been to understand the physics of thermalization in the relatively simplifying limit of arbitrarily high energy…
We investigate properties of a solar wind-like plasma including a secondary alpha particle population exhibiting a parallel temperature anisotropy with respect to the background magnetic field, using linear and quasi-linear predictions and…
Microtearing modes are an important drive of turbulent heat transport in present-day fusion plasmas. We investigate their linear stability under very-low collisionality regimes, expected for the next generations of devices, using…
Event horizon-scale observations of low-luminosity black hole accretion flows favor magnetically arrested disks, characterized by dynamically important magnetic fields ($\beta\lesssim1$, where $\beta$ is the ratio of plasma thermal pressure…
We discuss the (spontaneous) chiral symmetry breaking in a strongly coupled anisotropic quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in the presence of the magnetic field, using holography. The physical quantities related to the chiral symmetry breaking…
We present a set of three-dimensional (3D) direct numerical simulations of incompressible decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in which we investigate the influence of an external uniform magnetic field B_0. A parametric study in terms…
The proton temperature anisotropy in the solar wind is known to be constrained by the theoretical thresholds for pressure anisotropy-driven instabilities. Here we use approximately 1 million independent measurements of gyroscale magnetic…
We present a theoretical framework for describing electromagnetic kinetic turbulence in a multi-species, magnetized, pressure-anisotropic plasma. Turbulent fluctuations are assumed to be small compared to the mean field, to be spatially…
We examine the physics of the magnetic mirror mode in its final state of saturation, the thermodynamic equilibrium, to demonstrate that the mirror mode is the analogue of a superconducting effect in a classical anisotropic-pressure space…
Plasmoid-driven magnetic reconnection in elongated current sheets is suspected to be an ubiquitous phenomenon in space and astrophysical plasmas, but the mechanisms driving its onset and dynamics are still debated. Deciphering the physical…
A theoretical framework for low-frequency electromagnetic (drift-)kinetic turbulence in a collisionless, multi-species plasma is presented. The result generalises reduced magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD) and kinetic RMHD (Schekochihin et al.…
Effects of finite ion temperature on plasma flow in the converging-diverging magnetic field, the magnetic mirror, or equivalently, magnetic nozzle configuration, are studied using a quasineutral paraxial two-fluid MHD model with isothermal…
Important efforts are currently made for understanding the so-called kinetic instabilities, driven by the anisotropy of different species of plasma particles present in the solar wind and terrestrial magnetosphere. These instabilities are…
A key prediction of turbulence theories is frame-invariance, and in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, axisymmetry of fluctuations with respect to the background magnetic field. Paradoxically the power in fluctuations in the turbulent…
The microphysics of relativistic collisionless sheared flows is investigated in a configuration consisting of a globally neutral, relativistic $e^-e^+$ beam streaming through a hollow plasma/dielectric channel. We show through…