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ABSTRACT Turbulent high-energy astrophysical systems often feature asymmetric energy injection: for instance, Alfvén waves propagating from an accretion disc into its corona. Such systems are ‘imbalanced’: the energy fluxes parallel and antiparallel to the large-scale magnetic field are unequal. In the past, numerical studies of imbalanced turbulence have focused on the magnetohydrodynamic regime. In this study, we investigate externally driven imbalanced turbulence in a collision-less, ultrarelativistically hot, magnetized pair plasma using 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We find that the injected electromagnetic momentum efficiently converts into plasma momentum, resulting in net motion along the background magnetic field with speeds up to a significant fraction of lightspeed. This discovery has important implications for the launching of accretion disc winds. We also find that although particle acceleration in imbalanced turbulence operates on a slower time-scale than in balanced turbulence, it ultimately produces a power-law energy distribution similar to balanced turbulence. Our results have ramifications for black hole accretion disc coronae, winds, and jets.
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Fully Kinetic Shearing-box Simulations of Magnetorotational Turbulence in 2D and 3D. I. Pair Plasmas
Abstract The magnetorotational instability (MRI) is a fundamental mechanism determining the macroscopic dynamics of astrophysical accretion disks. In collisionless accretion flows around supermassive black holes, MRI-driven plasma turbulence cascading to microscopic (i.e., kinetic) scales can result in enhanced angular-momentum transport and redistribution, nonthermal particle acceleration, and a two-temperature state where electrons and ions are heated unequally. However, this microscopic physics cannot be captured with standard magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) approaches typically employed to study the MRI. In this work, we explore the nonlinear development of MRI turbulence in a pair plasma, employing fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations in two and three dimensions. First, we thoroughly study the axisymmetric MRI with 2D simulations, explaining how and why the 2D geometry produces results that differ substantially from 3D MHD expectations. We then perform the largest (to date) 3D simulations, for which we employ a novel shearing-box approach, demonstrating that 3D PIC models can reproduce the mesoscale (i.e., MHD) MRI dynamics in sufficiently large runs. With our fully kinetic simulations, we are able to describe the nonthermal particle acceleration and angular-momentum transport driven by the collisionless MRI. Since these microscopic processes ultimately lead to the emission of potentially measurable radiation in accreting plasmas, our work is of prime importance to understand current and future observations from first principles, beyond the limitations imposed by fluid (MHD) models. While in this first study we focus on pair plasmas for simplicity, our results represent an essential step toward designing more realistic electron–ion simulations, on which we will focus in future work.
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- PAR ID:
- 10429131
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 938
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 86
- 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/10.3847/1538-4357/ac8a94
