A new particle acceleration process in a developing Alfvén turbulence in the course of successive parametric instabilities of a relativistic pair plasma is investigated by utilyzing one-dimensional electromagnetic full particle code. Coherent wave-particle interactions result in efficient particle acceleration leading to a power-law like energy distribution function. In the simulation high energy particles having large relativistic masses are preferentially accelerated as the turbulence spectrum evolves in time. Main acceleration mechanism is simultaneous relativistic resonance between a particle and two different waves. An analytical expression of maximum attainable energy in such wave-particle interactions is derived.
We study the heating of charged test particles in three-dimensional numerical simulations of weakly compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence (``Alfvenic turbulence''); these results are relevant to particle heating and acceleration in the solar wind, solar flares, accretion disks onto black holes, and other astrophysics and heliospheric environments. The physics of particle heating depends on whether the gyrofrequency of a particle is comparable to the frequency of a turbulent fluctuation that is resolved on the computational domain. Particles with these frequencies nearly equal under…
It is well-recognized that the presence of magnetic fields will lead to anisotropic energy cascade and dissipation of astrophysical turbulence. With the diffusion approximation and linear dissipation rates, we study the cascade and damping of Alfvén-cyclotron fluctuations in solar plasmas numerically. For an isotropic case the steady-state turbulence spectra are nearly isotropic in the inertial range and can be fitted by a single power-law function with a spectral index of -3/2, similar to the Iroshnikov-Kraichnan phenomenology. Beyond the MHD regime the kinetic effects make the spectrum softe…
In this paper, we report our detailed analysis of the new strong-coupling regime between Alfvén and fast modes in Poynting-dominated plasma turbulence, reported in our previous work Takamoto & Lazarian (2016), which is an important effect for many relativistic plasma phenomena, and calls for new theories of Poynting-dominated MHD turbulence. We performed numerical simulations of relativistic MHD turbulence in isothermal plasmas, and analyzed the ratio of fast to Alfvén mode energy. We found that the increase of the fast mode with the background $σ$-parameter can be observed even in isothermal …
This paper considers turbulent damping of Alfven waves in magnetized plasmas. We identify two cases of damping, one related to damping of cosmic rays streaming instability, the other related to damping of Alfven waves emitted by a macroscopic wave source, e.g. stellar atmosphere. The physical difference between the two cases is that in the former case the generated waves are emitted in respect to the local direction of magnetic field, in the latter in respect to the mean field. The scaling of damping is different in the two cases. We the regimes of turbulence ranging from subAlfvenic to superA…
In this Letter, we report compressible mode effects on relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) turbulence in Poynting-dominated plasmas using 3-dimensional numerical simulations. We decomposed fluctuations in the turbulence into 3 MHD modes (fast, slow, and Alfvén) following the procedure mode decomposition in (Cho & Lazarian 2002), and analyzed their energy spectra and structure functions separately. We also analyzed the ratio of compressible mode to Alfvén mode energy with respect to its Mach number. We found the ratio of compressible mode increases not only with the Alfvén Mach number but w…
Using a three-dimensional compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation, we have reproduced the fast solar wind in a direct and self-consistent manner, based on the wave/turbulence driven scenario. As a natural consequence of Alfvenic perturbations at its base, highly compressional and turbulent fluctuations are generated, leading to heating and acceleration of the solar wind. The analysis of power spectra and structure functions reveals that the turbulence is characterized by its imbalanced (in the sense of outward Alfvenic fluctuations) and anisotropic nature. The density fluctuation ori…
Alfvén waves as excited in black hole accretion disks and neutron star magnetospheres are the building blocks of turbulence in relativistic, magnetized plasmas. A large reservoir of magnetic energy is available in these systems, such that the plasma can be heated significantly even in the weak turbulence regime. We perform high-resolution three-dimensional simulations of counter-propagating Alfvén waves, showing that an $E_{B_{\perp}}(k_{\perp}) \propto k_{\perp}^{-2}$ energy spectrum develops as a result of the weak turbulence cascade in relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and its infinitely ma…
We present results from 2.5-dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations of the interaction of nonlinear Alfven waves with thin current sheets in relativistic plasmas. We find that the Alfven waves cause the current sheet to bend and kink and increase its dissipation. The electrons are eventually heated to form a double Maxwellian, with the hotter Maxwellian caused by the current sheet dissipation and cooler Maxwellian caused by the Alfven turbulence cascade. These results may have important implications for the kinetic dissipation of MHD turbulence in which both nonlinear Alfven waves and current…
Alfvén wave collisions are the primary building blocks of the non-relativistic turbulence that permeates the heliosphere and low-to-moderate energy astrophysical systems. However, many astrophysical systems such as gamma-ray bursts, pulsar and magnetar magnetospheres, and active galactic nuclei have relativistic flows or energy densities. To better understand these high energy systems, we derive reduced relativistic MHD equations and employ them to examine weak Alfvénic turbulence, dominated by three-wave interactions, in reduced relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, including the force-free, inf…
Magnetic energy around astrophysical compact objects can strongly dominate over plasma rest mass. Emission observed from these systems may be fed by dissipation of Alfvén wave turbulence, which cascades to small damping scales, energizing the plasma. We use 3D kinetic simulations to investigate this process. When the cascade is excited naturally, by colliding large-scale Alfvén waves, we observe quasithermal heating with no nonthermal particle acceleration. We also find that the particles are energized along the magnetic field lines and so are poor producers of synchrotron radiation. At low pl…
Alfvénic component of MHD turbulence damps Alfvénic waves. The consequences of this effect are important for many processes, from cosmic ray (CR) propagation to launching outflows and winds in galaxies and other magnetized systems. We discuss the differences in the damping of the streaming instability by turbulence and the damping of a plane parallel wave. The former takes place in the system of reference aligned with the local direction of magnetic field along which CRs stream. The latter is in the reference frame of the mean magnetic field and traditionally considered in plasma studies. We a…
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is an important agent of energetic particle acceleration. Focusing on the compressible properties of magnetic turbulence, we adopt test particle method to study the particle acceleration from Alfvén, slow and fast modes in four turbulence regimes that may appear in a realistic astrophysical environment. Our studies show that (1) the second-order Fermi mechanism drives the acceleration of particles in the cascade processes of three modes by particle-turbulence interactions, regardless of whether the shock wave appears; (2) not only can the power spectra of m…
Statistics of the magnetic field disturbances in the supernova remnants (SNRs) can be accessed using the second-order correlation function of the synchrotron intensities. Here we measure the magnetic energy spectra in supernova remnant Cassiopeia-A by two-point correlation of the synchrotron intensities, using a recently developed unbiased method. The measured magnetic energy spectra in the vicinity of supernova remnant shocks are found to be 2/3 power law over the decade of range scales, showing the developed trans-Alfvenic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Our results are globally consistent w…
This work has the main objective to provide a detailed investigation of cosmic ray propagation in magnetohydrodynamic turbulent fields generated by forcing the fluid velocity field at large scales. It provides a derivation of the particle mean free path dependences in terms of the turbulence level described by the Alfvénic Mach number and in terms of the particle rigidity. We use an upgrade version of the magnetohydrodynamic code {\tt RAMSES} which includes a forcing module and a kinetic module and solve the Lorentz equation for each particle. The simulations are performed using a 3 dimension …
We study the influence of kinetic-scale Alfvénic turbulence on the generation of plasma radio emission in the solar coronal regions where the plasma/magnetic pressure ratio $β$ is smaller than the electron/ion mass ratio $m_{e}/m_{i}$. The present study is motivated by the phenomenon of solar type I radio storms associated with the strong magnetic field of active regions. The measured brightness temperature of the type I storms can be up to $10^{10}$ K for continuum emission, and can exceed $10^{11}$ K for type I bursts. At present, there is no generally accepted theory explaining such high br…
The theory of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence predicts that Alfvénic and slow-mode-like compressive fluctuations are energetically decoupled at small scales in the inertial range. The partition of energy between these fluctuations determines the nature of dissipation, which, in many astrophysical systems, happens on scales where plasma is collisionless. However, when the magnetorotational instability (MRI) drives the turbulence, it is difficult to resolve numerically the scale at which both types of fluctuations start to be decoupled because the MRI energy injection occurs in a broad rang…
Astrophysical plasmas are turbulent and magnetized. The interaction between cosmic rays (CRs) and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is a fundamental astrophysical process. Based on the current understanding of MHD turbulence, we revisit the trapping of CRs by magnetic mirrors in the context of MHD turbulence. In compressible MHD turbulence, isotropic fast modes dominate both trapping and gyroresonant scattering of CRs. The presence of trapping significantly suppresses the pitch-angle scattering and the spatial diffusion of CRs along the magnetic field. The resulting parallel diffusion coeff…
We report analytical and numerical investigations of sub-ion-scale turbulence in low-beta plasmas, focusing on the spectral properties of the fluctuations and electron heating. In the isothermal limit, the numerical results strongly support a description of the turbulence as a critically-balanced Kolmogorov-like cascade of kinetic Alfvén wave fluctuations, as amended by Boldyrev & Perez (Astrophys. J. Lett. 758, L44 (2012)) to include intermittent effects. When the constraint of isothermality is removed (i.e., with the inclusion of electron kinetic physics), the energy spectrum is found to ste…
Alfvénic-type turbulence in strongly magnetized, low-beta pair plasmas is investigated. A coupled set of equations for the evolution of the magnetic and flow potentials are derived, covering both fluid and kinetic scales. In the fluid (MHD) range those equations are the same as for electron-ion plasmas, so turbulence at those scales is expected to be of the Alfvénic nature, exhibiting critical balance, dynamic alignment, and transition to a tearing mediated regime at small scales. The critical scale at which a transition to a tearing-mediated range occurs is derived, and the spectral slope in …
We present three-dimensional, hybrid-kinetic numerical simulations of driven Alfvén-wave turbulence of relevance to the collisionless near-Earth solar wind. Special attention is paid to the spectral transition that occurs near the ion-Larmor scale and to the origins of preferential perpendicular ion heating and of non-thermal wings in the parallel distribution function. Several novel diagnostics are used to show that the ion heating rate increases as the kinetic-Alfvén-wave fluctuations, which comprise the majority of the sub-ion-Larmor turbulent cascade, attain near-ion-cyclotron frequencies.…
We study the streaming instability of GeV$-100~$GeV cosmic rays (CRs) and its damping in the turbulent interstellar medium (ISM). We find that the damping of streaming instability is dominated by ion-neutral collisional damping in weakly ionized molecular clouds, turbulent damping in the highly ionized warm medium, and nonlinear Landau damping in the Galactic halo. Only in the Galactic halo, is the streaming speed of CRs close to the Alfvén speed. Alfvénic turbulence plays an important role in both suppressing the streaming instability and regulating the diffusion of streaming CRs via magnetic…
A Hamiltonian two-field gyrofluid model for kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) in a magnetized electron-proton plasma, retaining ion finite-Larmor-radius corrections and parallel magnetic field fluctuations, is used to study the inverse cascades that develop when turbulence is randomly driven at sub-ion scales. In the directions perpendicular to the ambient field, the dynamics of the cascade turns out to be nonlocal and the ratio $χ_f$ of the wave period to the characteristic nonlinear time at the driving scale affect some of its properties. For example, at small values of $χ_f$, parametric decay ins…
This paper studies cosmic ray (CR) transport in magneto hydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. CR transport is strongly dependent on the properties of the magnetic turbulence. We perform test particle simulations to study the interactions of CR with both total MHD turbulence and decomposed MHD modes. The spatial diffusion coefficients and the pitch angle scattering diffusion coefficients are calculated from the test particle trajectories in turbulence. Our results confirm that the fast modes dominate the CR propagation, whereas Alfvén and slow modes are much less efficient and have shown similar pitch…
