Related papers: Relaxation to universal non-Maxwellian equilibria …
Plasmas whose Coulomb-collision rates are very small may relax on shorter time scales to non-Maxwellian quasi-equilibria, which, nevertheless, have a universal form, with dependence on initial conditions retained only via an infinite set of…
For plasma velocity space instabilities driven by particle distributions significantly deviated from a Maxwellian, weak collisions can damp the instabilities by an amount that is significantly beyond the collisional rate itself. This is…
The problem posed by the possible existence/non-existence of spatially non-symmetric kinetic equilibria has remained unsolved in plasma theory. For collisionless magnetized plasmas this involves the construction of stationary solutions of…
The concept of plasma relaxation as a constrained energy minimization is reviewed. Recent work by the authors on generalizing this approach to partially relaxed three-dimensional plasma systems in a way consistent with chaos theory is…
How thermal equilibrium is determined in a weakly collisional plasma is a fundamental question in plasma physics. This letter shows that the turbulence driven by the magnetic curvature and density gradient tends to equilibrate the…
Collisionless plasmas exhibit nonthermal particle distributions after being energized; as a consequence, they enter a state of low Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) entropy relative to the thermal state. The Vlasov equations predict that in a…
The Euler-Maxwell system as a hydrodynamic model for plasma physics to describe the dynamics of the compressible electrons in a constant charged non-moving ion background is studied. The global smooth flow with small amplitude is…
Collisionless and weakly collisional plasmas often exhibit non-thermal quasi-equilibria. Among these quasi-equilibria, distributions with power-law tails are ubiquitous. It is shown that the statistical-mechanical approach originally…
We consider the periodic problem for two-fluid non-isentropic Euler-Maxwell systems in plasmas. By means of suitable choices of symmetrizers and an induction argument on the order of the time-space derivatives of solutions in energy…
The evolution equations for a plasma comprising multiple species of charged fluids with relativistic bulk and thermal motion are derived. It is shown that a minimal fluid coupling model allows a natural casting of the evolution equations in…
Using the Langevin approach and the multiscale technique, a kinetic theory of the time and space nonlocal fluctuations in the collisional plasma is constructed. In local equilibrium a generalized version of the Callen-Welton theorem is…
An amplitude equation for an unstable mode in a collisionless plasma is derived from the dynamics on the two-dimensional unstable manifold of the equilibrium. The mode amplitude $\rho(t)$ decouples from the phase due to the spatial…
A higher-order multiscale analysis of the dissipation range of collisionless plasma turbulence is presented using in-situ high-frequency magnetic field measurements from the Cluster spacecraft in a stationary interval of fast ambient solar…
Collisionless plasmas, such as those encountered in tokamaks, exhibit a rich variety of instabilities. The physical origin, triggering mechanisms and fundamental understanding of many plasma instabilities, however, are still open problems.…
Electrostatic turbulence in weakly collisional, magnetized plasma can be interpreted as a cascade of entropy in phase space, which is proposed as a universal mechanism for dissipation of energy in magnetized plasma turbulence. When the…
A theoretical framework is presented which allows to quantitatively predict the final stationary state achieved by a non-neutral plasma during a process of collisionless relaxation. As a specific application, the theory is used to study…
We develop first-principles theory of kinetic plasma turbulence governed by the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau equations in the limit of vanishing collision rates. Following an exact renormalization-group approach pioneered by Onsager, we…
The relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system describes the evolution of a collisionless plasma. The problem of linear instability of this system is considered in two physical settings: the so-called "one and one-half" dimensional case, and the…
The motion of a collisionless plasma - a high-temperature, low-density, ionized gas - is described by the Vlasov-Maxwell (VM) system. These equations are considered in one space dimension and two momentum dimensions without the assumption…
A seventy year old problem of fluid and plasma relaxation has been revisited. A new principle of vanishing nonlinear transfer has been proposed to develop a unified theory of turbulent relaxation of neutral fluids and plasmas. Unlike…