Related papers: Electron Heating in Hot Accretion Flows
We describe local shearing box simulations of turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in a collisionless plasma. Collisionless effects may be important in radiatively inefficient accretion flows, such as near the black…
Turbulence driven by AGN activity, cluster mergers and galaxy motion constitutes an attractive energy source for heating the intracluster medium (ICM). How this energy dissipates into the ICM plasma remains unclear, given its low…
We present the results from axisymmetric time-dependent HD calculations of gas flows which are under the influence of gravity of a black hole in quasars. We assume that the flows are non-rotating and exposed to quasar radiation. We take…
Astrophysical plasmas are typically magnetized, with the Larmor radii of the charged particles many orders of magnitude smaller than their collisional mean free paths. The fundamental properties of such plasmas, e.g., conduction and…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a collisionless, electron-ion plasma with a decreasing background magnetic field, $B$, to study the effect of velocity-space instabilities on the viscous heating and thermal conduction of the…
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…
We identify a mechanism for magnetic field generation in the interaction of intense electromagnetic waves and underdense plasmas. We show that Raman scattered plasma waves trap and heat the electrons preferentially in their propagation…
The plasma in low-luminosity accretion flows, such as the one around the black hole at the center of M87 or Sgr A* at our Galactic Center, is expected to be collisioness and two-temperature, with protons hotter than electrons. Here,…
We study the effects of anisotropic thermal conduction on magnetized spherical accretion flows using global axisymmetric MHD simulations. In low collisionality plasmas, the Bondi spherical accretion solution is unstable to the…
We quantify the effects of electron thermal conduction on the properties of hot accretion flows, under the assumption of spherical symmetry. Electron heat conduction is important for low accretion rate systems where the electron cooling…
We present the largest 3D Particle-in-Cell shearing-box simulations of turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability, for the first time employing the realistic proton-to-electron mass ratio. We investigate the energy partition…
Both analytical and numerical works show that magnetic reconnection must occur in hot accretion flows. This process will effectively heat and accelerate electrons. In this paper we use the numerical hybrid simulation of magnetic…
We derive and analyze a dispersion relation for the growth rate of collisionless tearing modes, driven by electron inertia and accounting for equilibrium electron temperature anisotropy in a strong guide field regime. For this purpose, a…
Low-collisionality plasma in a magnetic field generically develops anisotropy in its distribution function with respect to the magnetic field direction. Motivated by the application to radiation from accretion flows and jets, we explore the…
Previous works have clearly shown the existence of winds from black hole hot accretion flow and investigated their detailed properties. In extremely low accretion rate systems, the collisional mean-free path of electrons is large compared…
Magnetorotational Instability (MRI), the instability causing turbulent transport in accretion disks, is studied in the kinetic regime. Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flows (RIAFs), like the one around the supermassive black hole in the…
We present the results of global three dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of black hole accretion flows. We focus on the dependence of numerical results on the gas temperature Tout supplied from the outer region. General…
Turbulent behavior at sub-proton scales in magnetized plasmas is important for a full understanding of the energetics of astrophysical flows such as the solar wind. We study the formation of electron temperature anisotropy due to…
We study the two-temperature magnetized advective accretion flow around the Kerr black holes. During accretion, ions are heated up due to viscous dissipation, and when Coulomb coupling becomes effective, they transfer a part of their energy…
We investigate the form of the momentum distribution function for protons and electrons in an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). We show that for all accretion rates, Coulomb collisions are too inefficient to thermalize the protons.…