Cross-Scale Effects in Solar-Wind Turbulence

Journal Article · Fri Jul 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.101.025006· OSTI ID:21134117

Valentini, F; Veltri, P ^[1]; Califano, F ^[2]; Mangeney, A ^[3]

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1. Dipartimento di Fisica and CNISM, Universita della Calabria, 87036 Rende (Serbia and Montenegro) (Italy)
2. Dipartimento di Fisica and CNISM, Universita di Pisa, 56127 Pisa (Italy)
3. Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 92195 Meudon Cedex (France)

The understanding of the small-scale termination of the turbulent energy cascade in collisionless plasmas is nowadays one of the outstanding problems in space physics. In the absence of collisional viscosity, the dynamics at small scales is presumably kinetic in nature; the identification of the physical mechanism which replaces energy dissipation and establishes the link between macroscopic and microscopic scales would open a new scenario in the study of turbulent heating in space plasmas. We present a numerical analysis of kinetic effects along the turbulent energy cascade in solar-wind plasmas which provides an effective unified interpretation of a wide set of spacecraft observations and shows that, simultaneously with an increase in the ion perpendicular temperature, strong bursts of electrostatic activity in the form of ion-acoustic turbulence are produced together with accelerated beams in the ion distribution function.

• OSTI ID: 21134117
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.025006; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
CASCADE THEORY
COLLISIONLESS PLASMA
DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
ELECTRON TEMPERATURE
ENERGY LOSSES
ION TEMPERATURE
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
PLASMA WAVES
SOLAR WIND
TURBULENCE
TURBULENT HEATING