ENERGETIC PARTICLE DIFFUSION IN CRITICALLY BALANCED TURBULENCE

Laitinen, Timo Lauri Mikael orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-7719-7783, Dalla, Silvia orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-7837-5780, Kelly, J. and Marsh, Michael (2013) ENERGETIC PARTICLE DIFFUSION IN CRITICALLY BALANCED TURBULENCE. The Astrophysical Journal, 764 (2). pp. 168-176. ISSN 0004-637X

[thumbnail of Publisher Version]
Preview
PDF (Publisher Version) - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike.

949kB

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/764/2/168

Abstract

Observations and modeling suggest that the fluctuations in magnetized plasmas exhibit scale-dependent anisotropy, with more energy in the fluctuations perpendicular to the mean magnetic field than in the parallel fluctuations and the anisotropy increasing at smaller scales. The scale dependence of the anisotropy has not been studied in full-orbit simulations of particle transport in turbulent plasmas so far. In this paper, we construct a model of critically balanced turbulence, as suggested by Goldreich & Sridhar, and calculate energetic particle spatial diffusion coefficients using full-orbit simulations. The model uses an enveloped turbulence approach, where each two-dimensional wave mode with wavenumber k ⊥ is packed into envelopes of length L following the critical balance condition, Lk –2/3 ⊥, with the wave mode parameters changing between envelopes. Using full-orbit particle simulations, we find that both the parallel and perpendicular diffusion coefficients increase by a factor of two, compared to previous models with scale-independent anisotropy.


Repository Staff Only: item control page