Structure of Plasma Heating in Gyrokinetic Alfvénic Turbulence

A. Bañón Navarro, Bogdan Teaca, D. Told, D. Groselj, P. Crandall, F. Jenko

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    46 Citations (Scopus)
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    Abstract

    We analyze plasma heating in weakly collisional kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence using high resolution gyrokinetic simulations spanning the range of scales between the ion and the electron gyroradii. Real space structures that have a higher than average heating rate are shown not to be confined to current sheets. This novel result is at odds with previous studies, which use the electromagnetic work in the local electron fluid frame, i.e., J⋅(E+ve×B), as a proxy for turbulent dissipation to argue that heating follows the intermittent spatial structure of the electric current. Furthermore, we show that electrons are dominated by parallel heating while the ions prefer the perpendicular heating route. We comment on the implications of the results presented here.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number245101
    JournalPhysical Review Letters
    Volume117
    Issue number24
    Early online date7 Dec 2016
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 9 Dec 2016

    Bibliographical note

    The full text is also available from: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.245101

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