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In situ measurements of kinetic scale current sheets in the solar wind show that they are often approximately force-free although the plasma beta is of order one. They frequently display systematic asymmetric and anti-correlated spatial…
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…
Force-free current sheets are local plasma structures with field-aligned electric currents and approximately uniform plasma pressures. Such structures, widely found throughout the heliosphere, are sites for plasma instabilities and magnetic…
We present analysis of 17,043 proton kinetic-scale current sheets collected over 124 days of Wind spacecraft measurements in the solar wind at 11 Samples/s magnetic field resolution. The current sheets have thickness $\lambda$ from a few…
From pulsar scintillations we infer the presence of sheet-like structures in the ISM; it has been suggested that these are current sheets. Current sheets probably play an important role in heating the solar corona, and there is evidence for…
We investigate the role of kinetic instabilities driven by a proton anisotropy on the onset of magnetic reconnection by means of 2-D hybrid simulations. The collisionless tearing of a current sheet is studied in the presence of a proton…
Intermittency of heating in weakly collisional plasma turbulence is an active subject of research, with significant potential impact on understanding of the solar wind, solar corona and astrophysical plasmas. Recent studies suggest a role…
Solar wind is probably the best laboratory to study turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. In addition to the presence of magnetic field, the differences with neutral fluid isotropic turbulence are: weakness of collisional dissipation and…
Proton temperature anisotropies between the directions parallel and perpendicular to the mean magnetic field are usually observed in the solar wind plasma. Here, we employ a high-resolution hybrid particle-in-cell simulation in order to…
Observations in the solar wind suggest that the compressive component of inertial-range solar-wind turbulence is dominated by slow modes. The low collisionality of the solar wind allows for non-thermal features to survive, which suggests…
The properties of current sheets forming in a ion-kinetically turbulent collisionless plasma are investigated by utilizing the results of two-dimensional hybrid-kinetic numerical simulations. For this sake the algorithm proposed by Zhdankin…
The solar wind is a magnetized plasma and as such exhibits collective plasma behavior associated with its characteristic spatial and temporal scales. The characteristic length scales include the size of the heliosphere, the collisional mean…
Among the fundamental and most challenging problems of laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasma physics is to understand the relaxation processes of nearly collisionless plasmas toward quasi-stationary states; and the resultant states of…
A dynamical approach, rather than the usual statistical approach, is taken to explore the physical mechanisms underlying the nonlinear transfer of energy, the damping of the turbulent fluctuations, and the development of coherent structures…
Turbulence develops in any stressed flow when the scales of the forcing are much larger than those of the dissipation. In neutral fluids, it consists of chaotic motions in physical space but with a universal energy spectrum in Fourier…
The relationship between a decaying strong turbulence and kinetic instabilities in a slowly expanding plasma is investigated using two-dimensional (2-D) hybrid expanding box simulations. We impose an initial ambient magnetic field…
Kinetic plasma processes have been investigated in the framework of solar wind turbulence, employing Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell (HVM) simulations. The dependency of proton temperature anisotropy T_{\perp}/T_{\parallel} on the parallel plasma…
3D kinetic-scale turbulence is studied numerically in the regime where electrons are strongly magnetized (the ratio of plasma species pressure to magnetic pressure is $\beta_e=0.1$ for electrons and $\beta_i=1$ for ions). Such a regime is…
Turbulence in space plasmas usually exhibits two regimes separated by a spectral break that divides the so called inertial and kinetic ranges. Large scale magnetic fluctuations are dominated by non-linear MHD wave-wave interactions…
The current sheet is an essential feature in solar flares and is the primary site for magnetic reconnetion and energy release. Imaging observations feature a long linear structure above the candle-flame-shaped flare loops, which resembles…