Heating of Heavy Ions in Low-beta Compressible Turbulence

Abstract

Enhancement of minor ions such as ${}^3$He and heavy ions in flare-associated solar energetic particle (SEP) events remains one of the major puzzles in heliophysics. In this work, we use 3D hybrid simulations (kinetic protons and fluid electrons) to investigate particle energization in a turbulent low-beta environment similar to solar flares. It is shown that in this regime the injected large-amplitude Alfvén waves develop into compressible and anisotropic turbulence, which efficiently heats thermal ions of different species. We find that temperature increase of heavy ions is inversely proportional to the charge to mass ratio, which is consistent with observations of impulsive SEP events. Further analysis reveals that ions are energized by interacting with nearly perpendicular magnetosonic waves near proton inertial scale.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Temperature in Solar Sources of 3He-rich Solar Energetic Particles and Relation to Ion Abundances
• Dynamical modulation of solar flare electron acceleration due to plasmoid-shock interactions in the looptop region
• Role of Parallel Solenoidal Electric Field on Energy Conversion in 2.5D Decaying Turbulence with a Guide Magnetic Field
• Preferential acceleration of heavy ions in magnetic reconnection: Hybrid-kinetic simulations with electron inertia
• Proton and Helium Heating by Cascading Turbulence in a Low-beta Plasma
• Low-energy Injection and Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Magnetic Turbulence
• Variable Ion Compositions of Solar Energetic Particle Events in the Inner Heliosphere: A Field-line Braiding Model with Compound Injections
• Hybrid simulation of Alfvén wave parametric decay instability in a laboratory relevant plasma