Preferential Heating and Acceleration of Heavy Ions in Impulsive Solar Flares

Abstract

We simulate decaying turbulence in a homogeneous pair plasma using three dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) method. A uniform background magnetic field permeates the plasma such that the magnetic pressure is three times larger than the thermal pressure and the turbulence is generated by counter-propagating shear Alfvén waves. The energy predominately cascades transverse to the background magnetic field, rendering the turbulence anisotropic at smaller scales. We simultaneously move several ion species of varying charge to mass ratios in our simulation and show that the particles of smaller charge to mass ratios are heated and accelerated to non-thermal energies at a faster rate, in accordance with the enhancement of heavy ions and non-thermal tail in their energy spectrum observed in the impulsive solar flares. We further show that the heavy ions are energized mostly in the direction perpendicular to the background magnetic field with a rate consistent with our analytical estimate of the rate of heating due to cyclotron resonance with the Alfvén waves of which a large fraction is due to obliquely propagating waves.

arXiv comment6 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Astrophysical gyrokinetics: kinetic and fluid turbulent cascades in magnetized weakly collisional plasmas
• Perpendicular Ion Heating by Low-Frequency Alfven-Wave Turbulence in the Solar Wind
• Scattering of energetic particles by anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence with a Goldreich-Sridhar power spectrum
• Alfven Wave Collisions, The Fundamental Building Block of Plasma Turbulence I: Asymptotic Solution
• What are the Sources of Solar Energetic Particles? Element Abundances and Source Plasma Temperatures
• Ion Temperatures in the Low Solar Corona: Polar Coronal Holes at Solar Minimum
• The Heating of Test Particles in Numerical Simulations of Alfvenic Turbulence
• Ensemble Simulations of Proton Heating in the Solar Wind via Turbulence and Ion Cyclotron Resonance
• The Acceleration of Ions in Solar Flares During Magnetic Reconnection
• Resonance Broadening and Heating of Charged Particles in Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence
• Perpendicular Ion Heating by Reduced Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence
• On the compressibility effect in test particle acceleration by magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
• Ultraheavy Element Enrichment in Impulsive Solar Flares

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Shaken Snow Globes: Kinematic Tracers of the Multiphase Condensation Cascade in Massive Galaxies, Groups, and Clusters
• 3He-rich solar energetic particles: Solar sources
• 3He-Rich Solar Energetic Particles in Helical Jets on the Sun
• Temperature in Solar Sources of 3He-rich Solar Energetic Particles and Relation to Ion Abundances
• Particle heating and acceleration by reconnecting and non-reconnecting Current Sheets
• Test particle energization of heavy ions in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
• Preferential acceleration of heavy ions in magnetic reconnection: Hybrid-kinetic simulations with electron inertia
• The effect of heavy ions on the dispersion properties of kinetic Alfvén waves in astrophysical plasmas
• Proton and Helium Heating by Cascading Turbulence in a Low-beta Plasma
• Spectroscopic EUV observations of impulsive solar energetic particle event sources