PLASMA TURBULENCE AND KINETIC INSTABILITIES AT ION SCALES IN THE EXPANDING SOLAR WIND
- Astronomical Institute, CAS, Bocni II/1401, CZ-14100 Prague (Czech Republic)
- Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
- Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Firenze Largo E. Fermi 2, I-50125 Firenze (Italy)
The relationship between a decaying strong turbulence and kinetic instabilities in a slowly expanding plasma is investigated using two-dimensional (2D) hybrid expanding box simulations. We impose an initial ambient magnetic field perpendicular to the simulation box, and we start with a spectrum of large-scale, linearly polarized, random-phase Alfvénic fluctuations that have energy equipartition between kinetic and magnetic fluctuations and vanishing correlation between the two fields. A turbulent cascade rapidly develops; magnetic field fluctuations exhibit a power-law spectrum at large scales and a steeper spectrum at ion scales. The turbulent cascade leads to an overall anisotropic proton heating, protons are heated in the perpendicular direction, and, initially, also in the parallel direction. The imposed expansion leads to generation of a large parallel proton temperature anisotropy which is at later stages partly reduced by turbulence. The turbulent heating is not sufficient to overcome the expansion-driven perpendicular cooling and the system eventually drives the oblique firehose instability in a form of localized nonlinear wave packets which efficiently reduce the parallel temperature anisotropy. This work demonstrates that kinetic instabilities may coexist with strong plasma turbulence even in a constrained 2D regime.
- OSTI ID:
- 22518873
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 811, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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