Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 832, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/832/1/57
Keywords
plasmas; solar wind; Sun: heliosphere; turbulence
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AGS-1063439, AGS-1156094, AGS-1460130]
- NASA [NNX14AI63G]
- MMS mission [NNX14AC39G]
- Solar Probe Plus science team (ISIS/SWRI subcontract ) [D99031L]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [1460130] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Intermittency of heating in weakly collisional plasma turbulence is an active subject of research, with significant potential impact on understanding of the solar wind, solar corona, and astrophysical plasmas. Recent studies suggest a role of vorticity in plasma heating. In magnetohydrodynamics small-scale vorticity is generated near current sheets and this effect persists in kinetic plasma, as demonstrated here with hybrid and fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. Furthermore, vorticity enhances local kinetic effects, with a generalized resonance condition selecting sign-dependent enhancements or reductions of proton heating and thermal anisotropy. In such plasmas heating is correlated with vorticity and current density, but more strongly with vorticity. These results help explain several prior results that find kinetic effects and energization near to, but not centered on, current sheets. Evidently intermittency in kinetic plasma involves multiple physical quantities, and the associated coherent structures and nonthermal effects are closely related.
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