Thermal conduction and particle transport in strong MHD turbulence, with application to galaxy-cluster plasmas

Abstract

We investigate field-line separation in strong MHD turbulence analytically and with direct numerical simulations. We find that in the static-magnetic-field approximation the thermal conductivity in galaxy clusters is reduced by a factor of about 5-10 relative to the Spitzer thermal conductivity of a non-magnetized plasma. We also estimate how the thermal conductivity would be affected by efficient turbulent resistivity.

Major revision: higher resolution simulations lead to significantly different conclusions. 26 pages, 10 figures