Fluidization of collisionless plasma turbulence

Meyrand, Romain; Kanekar, Anjor; Dorland, William; Schekochihin, Alexander A.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1813913116

Fluidization of collisionless plasma turbulence

Journal Article · Fri Jan 04 00:00:00 EST 2019 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813913116· OSTI ID:1489718

; Kanekar, Anjor; ; Schekochihin, Alexander A.

In a collisionless, magnetized plasma, particles may stream freely along magnetic field lines, leading to “phase mixing” of their distribution function and consequently, to smoothing out of any “compressive” fluctuations (of density, pressure, etc.). This rapid mixing underlies Landau damping of these fluctuations in a quiescent plasma—one of the most fundamental physical phenomena that makes plasma different from a conventional fluid. Nevertheless, broad power law spectra of compressive fluctuations are observed in turbulent astrophysical plasmas (most vividly, in the solar wind) under conditions conducive to strong Landau damping. Elsewhere in nature, such spectra are normally associated with fluid turbulence, where energy cannot be dissipated in the inertial-scale range and is, therefore, cascaded from large scales to small. By direct numerical simulations and theoretical arguments, it is shown here that turbulence of compressive fluctuations in collisionless plasmas strongly resembles one in a collisional fluid and does have broad power law spectra. This “fluidization” of collisionless plasmas occurs, because phase mixing is strongly suppressed on average by “stochastic echoes,” arising due to nonlinear advection of the particle distribution by turbulent motions. Other than resolving the long-standing puzzle of observed compressive fluctuations in the solar wind, our results suggest a conceptual shift for understanding kinetic plasma turbulence generally: rather than being a system where Landau damping plays the role of dissipation, a collisionless plasma is effectively dissipationless, except at very small scales. The universality of “fluid” turbulence physics is thus reaffirmed even for a kinetic, collisionless system.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-04ER54784; FG02-93ER54197

OSTI ID:: 1489718

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1610251

Journal Information:: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 116; ISSN 0027-8424

Publisher:: National Academy of SciencesCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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