Related papers: Self-organization in collisionless, high-$\beta$ t…
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…
Results from a numerical study of fluctuation dynamo in a collisionless, weakly magnetized plasma are presented. The key difference between this dynamo and its magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) counterpart is the adiabatic production of…
Both global dynamics and turbulence in magnetized weakly collisional cosmic plasmas are described by general magnetofluid equations that contain pressure anisotropies and heat fluxes that must be calculated from microscopic plasma kinetic…
The intracluster medium (ICM) is stably stratified in the hydrodynamic sense with the entropy $s$ increasing outwards. However, thermal conduction along magnetic field lines fundamentally changes the stability of the ICM, leading to the…
We discuss dissipative processes in strongly gyrotropic, nearly collisionless plasma in clusters of galaxies (ICM). First, we point out that Braginsky theory, which assumes that collisions are more frequent that the system's dynamical time…
Hybrid-kinetic numerical simulations of firehose and mirror instabilities in a collisionless plasma are performed in which pressure anisotropy is driven as the magnetic field is changed by a persistent linear shear $S$. For a decreasing…
The intracluster medium of galaxy clusters is a weakly collisional, high-beta plasma in which the transport of heat and momentum occurs primarily along magnetic-field lines. Anisotropic heat conduction allows convective instabilities to be…
In low-collisionality plasmas, anisotropic heat conduction due to a magnetic field leads to buoyancy instabilities for any nonzero temperature gradient. We study analogous instabilities in degenerate {\it collisional} plasmas, i.e., when…
This is a brief review of the main results of our recent studies of the nonlinear evolution of the small-scale MHD dynamo in the high-Prandtl-number regime and of the structure of the resulting saturated state of the isotropic homogeneous…
Future nuclear fusion reactors will have to confine plasma with strong kinetic gradients and small fractions of fusion-born energetic particles (EP) that are ~100 times hotter than the thermal ions. In our analysis, we assume the existence…
Using two-dimensional hybrid-kinetic simulations, we explore the nonlinear "interruption" of standing and traveling shear-Alfv\'en waves in collisionless plasmas. Interruption involves a self-generated pressure anisotropy removing the…
The linear and nonlinear evolutions of the tearing instability in a collisionless plasma with a strong guide field are analyzed on the basis of a two-field Hamiltonian gyrofluid model. The model is valid for a low ion temperature and a…
The Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability occurs in multiple heliospheric (solar-wind stream interfaces, planetary magnetospheres, cometary tails, heliopause flanks) and interstellar (protoplanetary disks, relativistic jets, neutron star…
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 linear stability analysis of a hot, dilute and differentially rotating plasma by considering anisotropic transport effects. In the dilute plasmas, the ion Larmor radius is small compared with its collisional mean free path.…
We study properties of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) eigenmodes by decomposing the data of MHD simulations into linear MHD modes - namely the Alfven, slow magnetosonic, and fast magnetosonic modes. We drive turbulence with a mixture of…
This work is devoted to the study of the influence of temperature anisotropy and parallel heat flux on the stability of supersonic shear flow in collisionless plasmas. Within a fluid-based framework, we employ the 16-moment transport…
Plasmoid instability accelerates reconnection in collisional plasmas by transforming a laminar reconnection layer into numerous plasmoids connected by secondary current sheets in two dimensions (2D) and by fostering self-generated turbulent…
We investigate linear perturbations in an incompressible, weakly collisional, anisotropic plasma, taking heat fluxes into account. Our analysis identifies a new class of time-invariant perturbations that encompass heat flux variations and…
The evolution of Alfven turbulence due to three-wave interactions is discussed using kinetic theory for a collisionless, thermal plasma. There are three low-frequency modes, analogous to the three modes of compressible MHD. When only Alfven…