Related papers: Interplay between the non-resonant streaming insta…
We examine the effects of streaming cosmic rays upstream of a strong, parallel collisionless shock. We include explicitly the inertia of the cosmic rays in our analysis, which was neglected in previous work. For parameters relevant to the…
Collisionless shocks tend to send charged particles into the upstream, driving electric currents through the plasma. Using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate how the background thermal plasma neutralizes such currents in…
The instability of a monoenergetic electron beam in a collisional one-dimensional plasma bounded between grounded walls is considered both analytically and numerically. Collisions between electrons and neutrals are accounted for the plasma…
In weakly-collisional plasmas such as the intracluster medium (ICM), heat and momentum transport become anisotropic with respect to the local magnetic field direction. Anisotropic heat conduction causes the slow magnetosonic wave to become…
We report on a first-principles numerical and theoretical study of plasma dynamo in a fully kinetic framework. By applying an external mechanical force to an initially unmagnetized plasma, we develop a self-consistent treatment of the…
In clusters of galaxies, the specific entropy of intracluster plasma increases outwards. Nevertheless, a number of recent studies have shown that the intracluster medium is subject to buoyancy instabilities due to the effects of cosmic rays…
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 collision of two expanding plasma clouds is investigated, emphasizing instabilities and electron energization in the plasma mixing layer. This work is directly relevant to laboratory experiments with explosively-created laser or z-pinch…
Theoretical approaches to low-frequency magnetized turbulence in collisionless and weakly collisional astrophysical plasmas are reviewed. The proper starting point for an analytical description of these plasmas is kinetic theory, not fluid…
Radiative cooling can drive dynamics in multi-phase gas. A dramatic example is hydrodynamic `shattering', the violent, pressure-driven fragmentation of a cooling cloud which falls drastically out of pressure balance with its surroundings.…
Plasma blobs are observed to be weak density enhancements as radially stretched structures emerging from the cusps of quiescent coronal streamers. In this paper, it is suggested that the formation of blobs is a consequence of an intrinsic…
The MHD equations, as a collisional fluid model that remains in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), have long been used to describe turbulence in myriad space and astrophysical plasmas. Yet, the vast majority of these plasmas, from the…
We study the linear stability of weakly magnetized differentially rotating plasmas in both collisionless kinetic theory and Braginskii's theory of collisional, magnetized plasmas. We focus on the very weakly magnetized limit that is…
Counterstreaming plasma structures are widely present in laboratory experiments and astrophysical systems, and they are investigated either to prevent unstable modes arising in beam-plasma experiments or to prove the existence of large…
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…
Within the context of Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), the properties of a parallel shock do not depend on the field strength, as the field and the fluid are disconnected for such a geometry. However, in the collisionless case, the field can…
Microinstabilities play important roles in both entropy generation and particle acceleration in collisionless shocks. Recent studies have suggested that in the transition zone of quasi-perpendicular ($Q_{\perp}$) shocks in the high-beta…
In two previous works [arXiv:1009.4363,arXiv:1107.0668], we studied the time evolution of a system of real scalar fields with quartic coupling which shares important features with the Color Glass Condensate description of heavy ion…
This study investigates Parker instability in an interstellar medium (ISM) near the Galactic plane using three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic simulations. Parker instability arises from the presence of a magnetic field in a plasma,…
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…