English

Compressing turbulence and sudden viscous dissipation with compression-dependent ionization state

Plasma Physics 2016-11-23 v3

Abstract

Turbulent plasma flow, amplified by rapid 3D compression, can be suddenly dissipated under continuing compression. This effect relies on the sensitivity of the plasma viscosity to the temperature, μT5/2\mu \sim T^{5/2}. The plasma viscosity is also sensitive to the plasma ionization state. We show that the sudden dissipation phenomenon may be prevented when the plasma ionization state increases during compression, and demonstrate the regime of net viscosity dependence on compression where sudden dissipation is guaranteed. Additionally, it is shown that, compared to cases with no ionization, ionization during compression is associated with larger increases in turbulent energy, and can make the difference between growing and decreasing turbulent energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.03164,
  title  = {Compressing turbulence and sudden viscous dissipation with compression-dependent ionization state},
  author = {Seth Davidovits and Nathaniel J. Fisch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.03164},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:57:50.145Z