Asymmetric Diffusion of Magnetic Field Lines
arXiv:1303.3269 · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/767/2/L39
Abstract
Stochasticity of magnetic field lines is important for particle transport properties. Magnetic field lines separate faster than diffusively in turbulent plasma, which is called superdiffusion. We discovered that this superdiffusion is pronouncedly asymmetric, so that the separation of field lines along the magnetic field direction is different from the separation in the opposite direction. While the symmetry of the flow is broken by the so-called imbalance or cross-helicity, the difference between forward and backward diffusion is not directly due to imbalance, but a non-trivial consequence of both imbalance and non-reversibility of turbulence. The asymmetric diffusion perpendicular to the mean magnetic field entails a variety of new physical phenomena, such as the production of parallel particle streaming in the presence of perpendicular particle gradients. Such streaming and associated instabilities could be significant for particle transport in laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas.
4 pages 3 figures
References in corpus (7)
- Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
- Cosmic Ray Propagation: Nonlinear Diffusion Parallel and Perpendicular to Mean Magnetic Field
- Fast Magnetic Reconnection and Spontaneous Stochasticity
- Observation of Anisotropy in the Arrival Directions of Galactic Cosmic Rays at Multiple Angular Scales with IceCube
- Strong Imbalanced Turbulence
- Structure of Stationary Strong Imbalanced Turbulence
- Basic Properties of MHD Turbulence in the Inertial Range
Cited by in corpus (10)
- 3D Turbulent Reconnection: Theory, Tests and Astrophysical Implications
- Diffusion of cosmic rays in MHD turbulence with magnetic mirrors
- Superdiffusion of Cosmic Rays in Compressible Magnetized Turbulence
- On the parallel spectrum in MHD Turbulence
- Anisotropic Cosmic Ray Diffusion and its Implications for Gamma-Ray Astronomy
- Fast Magnetic Reconnection with Turbulence in High Lundquist Number Limit
- Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysical Environments
- Coronal Heating Topology: the Interplay of Current Sheets and Magnetic Field Lines
- Transport of cosmic-ray protons in intermittent heliospheric turbulence: model and simulations
- Cosmic Ray Diffusion in the Turbulent Interstellar Medium: Effects of Mirror Diffusion and Pitch Angle Scattering