Diagnosing collisionless energy transfer using field-particle correlations: gyrokinetic turbulence

Abstract

Determining the physical mechanisms that extract energy from turbulent fluctuations in weakly collisional magnetized plasmas is necessary for a more complete characterization of the behavior of a variety of space and astrophysical plasmas. Such a determination is complicated by the complex nature of the turbulence as well as observational constraints, chiefly that in situ measurements of such plasmas are typically only available at a single point in space. Recent work has shown that correlations between electric fields and particle velocity distributions constructed from single-point measurements produce a velocity-dependent signature of the collisionless damping mechanism. We extend this work by constructing field-particle correlations using data sets drawn from single points in strongly driven, turbulent, electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations to demonstrate that this technique can identify the collisionless mechanisms operating in such systems. The correlation's velocity-space structure agrees with expectations of resonant mechanisms transferring energy collisionlessly in turbulent systems. This work motivates the eventual application of field-particle correlations to spacecraft measurements in the solar wind, with the ultimate goal to determine the physical mechanisms that dissipate magnetized plasma turbulence.

24 pages, 12 figures, submitted to the Journal of Plasma Physics

References in corpus (8)

• Kinetic Simulations of Magnetized Turbulence in Astrophysical Plasmas
• Magnetic Reconnection and Intermittent Turbulence in the Solar Wind
• Linearized model Fokker-Planck collision operators for gyrokinetic simulations. I. Theory
• Predicted Impacts of Proton Temperature Anisotropy on Solar Wind Turbulence
• Measuring Collisionless Damping in Heliospheric Plasmas using Field-Particle Correlations
• Validity of the Taylor Hypothesis for Linear Kinetic Waves in the Weakly Collisional Solar Wind
• A Prospectus on Kinetic Heliophysics
• The Dynamical Generation of Current Sheets in Astrophysical Plasma Turbulence

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Evidence for Electron Landau Damping in Space Plasma Turbulence
• Hybrid-Kinetic Simulations of Ion Heating in Alfvénic Turbulence
• Enhanced Energy Transfer Rate in Solar Wind Turbulence Observed near the Sun from Parker Solar Probe
• Fully kinetic versus reduced-kinetic modelling of collisionless plasma turbulence
• A Prospectus on Kinetic Heliophysics
• Diagnosing collisionless energy transfer using field-particle correlations: Alfven-Ion Cyclotron Turbulence
• The Enhancement of Proton Stochastic Heating in the near-Sun Solar Wind
• A solvable model of Vlasov-kinetic plasma turbulence in Fourier-Hermite phase space
• Linear Stability in the Inner Heliosphere: Helios Reëvaluated
• Radial evolution of stochastic heating in low-$\beta$ solar wind