Related papers: Energy partition in collisionless counterstreaming…
Turbulence is often invoked to explain the origin of nonthermal particles in space and astrophysical plasmas. By means of 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate that turbulence in low-$\beta$ plasmas ($\beta$ is the…
Collisionless magnetic reconnection is a prime candidate to account for flare-like or steady emission, outflow launching, or plasma heating, in a variety of high-energy astrophysical objects, including ones with relativistic ion-electron…
Magnetic reconnection has long been known to be the most important mechanism as quick conversion of magnetic field energy into plasma kinetic energy. In addition, energy dissipation by reconnection has gained attention not only as a plasma…
The plasma heating during collisionless magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations. We analyze the time evolution of the plasma temperature associated with the motion of the reconnecting flux tube, where the…
Observational evidence in space and astrophysical plasmas with long collisional mean free path suggests that more massive charged particles may be preferentially heated. One possible mechanism for this is the turbulent cascade of energy…
The charged particle stopping power in a highly ionized and weakly to moderately coupled plasma has been calculated to leading and next-to-leading order by Brown, Preston, and Singleton (BPS). After reviewing the main ideas behind this…
Dissipative processes cause collisionless plasmas in many systems to develop nonthermal particle distributions with broad power-law tails. The prevalence of power-law energy distributions in space/astrophysical observations and kinetic…
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…
The linear growth rate and saturation level of magnetic fields for Weibel instabilities driven by ion temperature anisotropy, defined as $\alpha=(T_\perp/T_\parallel)-1$ where $T_\perp$ and $T_\parallel$ are ion temperatures perpendicular…
Does overall thermal equilibrium exist between ions and electrons in a weakly collisional, magnetised, turbulent plasma---and, if not, how is thermal energy partitioned between ions and electrons? This is a fundamental question in plasma…
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 dissipation of turbulent magnetic fields is an appealing scenario to explain the origin of non-thermal particles in high-energy astrophysical sources. However, it has been suggested that the particle distribution may effectively…
A relativistic electron beam propagating through plasma induces a return current in the system. Such a system of counterstreaming forward and return current is susceptible to host of instabilities out of which Weibel remains a dominant mode…
Magnetized turbulence and magnetic reconnection are often invoked to explain the nonthermal emission observed from a wide variety of astrophysical sources. By means of fully-kinetic 2D and 3D PIC simulations, we investigate the interplay…
Thermal instability in an electron-ion magnetized plasma, which is relevant in the intragalactic medium (IGM) of galaxy clusters, solar corona, and other two-component plasma objects is investigated. We apply the multicomponent plasma…
In this work, we investigate collisionless shocks propagating in a relativistically hot unmagnetized electron-positron plasmas. We estimate the dissipation fraction at shocks in the relativistically hot plasma, showing that it is…
Experiments with interacting high-velocity flows of laser plasma can help answer the fundamental questions in plasma physics and improve the understanding of the mechanisms behind astrophysical phenomena, such as formation of collisionless…
The electron residual energy originated from the stochastic heating in under-dense field-ionized plasma is here investigated. The optical response of plasma is initially modeled by using the concept of two counter-propagating…
We present numerical results from plasma particle simulations of collisionless shocks and ultra-relativistic counter-streaming plasmas. We demonstrate how the field-particle interactions lead to particle acceleration behind the shock-front.…
The dynamics of two initially unmagnetized relativistic counter-streaming homogeneous ion-electron plasma beams are simulated in two dimensions using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. It is shown that current filaments, which form due to…