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Pressure anisotropy can strongly influence the dynamics of weakly collisional, high-beta plasmas, but its effects are missed by standard magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Small changes to the magnetic-field strength generate large pressure-anisotropy forces, heating the plasma, driving instabilities and rearranging flows, even on scales far above the particles’ gyroscales where kinetic effects are traditionally considered most important. Here, we study the influence of pressure anisotropy on turbulent plasmas threaded by a mean magnetic field (Alfvénic turbulence). Extending previous results that were concerned with Braginskii MHD, we consider a wide range of regimes and parameters using a simplified fluid model based on drift kinetics with heat fluxes calculated using a Landau-fluid closure. We show that viscous (pressure-anisotropy) heating dissipates between a quarter (in collisionless regimes) and half (in collisional regimes) of the turbulent-cascade power injected at large scales; this does not depend strongly on either plasma beta or the ion-to-electron temperature ratio. This will in turn influence the plasma's thermodynamics by regulating energy partition between different dissipation channels (e.g. electron and ion heat). Due to the pressure anisotropy's rapid dynamic feedback onto the flows that create it – an effect we term ‘magneto-immutability’ – the viscous heating is confined to a narrow range of scales near the forcing scale, supporting a nearly conservative, MHD-like inertial-range cascade, via which the rest of the energy is transferred to small scales. Despite the simplified model, our results – including the viscous heating rate, distributions and turbulent spectra – compare favourably with recent hybrid-kinetic simulations. This is promising for the more general use of extended-fluid (or even MHD) approaches to model weakly collisional plasmas such as the intracluster medium, hot accretion flows and the solar wind.
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Magneto-immutable turbulence in weakly collisional plasmas
We propose that pressure anisotropy causes weakly collisional turbulent plasmas to self-organize so as to resist changes in magnetic-field strength. We term this effect ‘magneto-immutability’ by analogy with incompressibility (resistance to changes in pressure). The effect is important when the pressure anisotropy becomes comparable to the magnetic pressure, suggesting that in collisionless, weakly magnetized (high- $$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$$ ) plasmas its dynamical relevance is similar to that of incompressibility. Simulations of magnetized turbulence using the weakly collisional Braginskii model show that magneto-immutable turbulence is surprisingly similar, in most statistical measures, to critically balanced magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. However, in order to minimize magnetic-field variation, the flow direction becomes more constrained than in magnetohydrodynamics, and the turbulence is more strongly dominated by magnetic energy (a non-zero ‘residual energy’). These effects represent key differences between pressure-anisotropic and fluid turbulence, and should be observable in the $$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}\gtrsim 1$$ turbulent solar wind.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1804048
- PAR ID:
- 10204598
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Plasma Physics
- Volume:
- 85
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0022-3778
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377819000114
