6 papers
Secondary drift-driven instabilities in the presence of a parallel-propagating electromagnetic ion cyclotron wave and cold multi-component ions
Opal Issan, Patrick Kilian, Vadim Roytershteyn +2
Electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves are commonly observed in Earth's inner magnetosphere, particularly during geomagnetic storms driven by anisotropic ring-current protons.…
Mixed Hermite-Legendre spectral method for kinetic plasma simulations
Opal Issan, Gian Luca Delzanno, Vadim Roytershteyn
Kinetic collisionless plasma equations are commonly solved via spectral methods in velocity space. The most commonly used spectral method is based on Hermite polynomials with a Max…
Distributions of particles accelerated by strong Alfvénic turbulence
Stanislav Boldyrev, Daniel Humphrey, Vadim Roytershteyn +1
This work presents a model for generating nonthermal power-law tails of particles' energy probability density functions in turbulent collisionless plasmas, applicable to both non-r…
Particle acceleration and pitch-angle evolution in relativistic turbulence
Daniel Humphrey, Cristian Vega, Stanislav Boldyrev +1
Synchrotron radiation detected from relativistic astrophysical objects such as pulsar-wind nebulae and {jets from active galactic nuclei} depends on the magnetic fields and the dis…
Magnitude of Short-Wavelength Electric Field Fluctuations in Simulations of Collisionless Plasma Shocks
Vadim Roytershteyn, Lynn B. Wilson, Li-Jen Chen +2
Large-amplitude electrostatic fluctuations are routinely observed by spacecraft upon traversal of collisionless shocks in the heliosphere. Kinetic simulations of shocks have strugg…
Anisotropic particle acceleration in Alfvénic turbulence
Cristian Vega, Stanislav Boldyrev, Vadim Roytershteyn
Alfvénic turbulence is an effective mechanism for particle acceleration in strongly magnetized, relativistic plasma. In this study, we investigate a scenario where turbulent plasm…