The Proton Distribution Function in Weakly Magnetized Turbulent Plasmas

Abstract

We calculate the proton distribution function due to heating by subsonic (Alfvenic) turbulence in a weakly magnetized collisionless plasma. The distribution function is nonthermal. For non-relativistic energies, it is an exponential of the magnitude of the proton velocity. For ultra-relativistic energies, it can be characterized as a power law with a momentum-dependent slope.

7 pages, submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• Turbulence and Particle Heating in Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows
• Particle Heating by Alfvenic Turbulence in Hot Accretion Flows
• Gamma-ray Emission From Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows Around Black Holes: Application to the Galactic Center
• Radiative Efficiency of Collisionless Accretion

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Spectral Models of Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows with Winds
• Hybrid Thermal-Nonthermal Synchrotron Emission from Hot Accretion Flows
• Acceleration of Relativistic Electrons by MHD Turbulence: Implications for Non-thermal Emission from Black Hole Accretion Disks
• Low-rate accretion onto isolated stellar mass black holes
• Acceleration of energetic particles by large-scale compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
• The Efficiency of Second-Order Fermi Acceleration by Weakly Compressible MHD Turbulence
• Particle Heating by Nonlinear Alfvenic Turbulence in ADAFs
• Relativistic Outflows from Advection-Dominated Accretion Disks around Black Holes
• Why Do We See So Few Black Holes in Massive Binaries?
• Relativistic Spectra of Hot Black-Hole Winds