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Scaling of magnetic dissipation and particle acceleration in ABC fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2021

Qiang Chen Open the ORCID record for Qiang Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Krzysztof Nalewajko Open the ORCID record for Krzysztof Nalewajko [Opens in a new window]  and
Bhupendra Mishra Open the ORCID record for Bhupendra Mishra [Opens in a new window]
Qiang Chen*
Affiliation:
Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18, 00-716Warsaw, Poland
Krzysztof Nalewajko
Affiliation:
Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18, 00-716Warsaw, Poland
Bhupendra Mishra
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM87545, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: chen@camk.edu.pl
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Abstract

Using particle-in-cell numerical simulations with electron–positron pair plasma, we study how the efficiencies of magnetic dissipation and particle acceleration scale with the initial coherence length $\lambda _0$ in relation to the system size $L$ of the two-dimensional ‘Arnold–Beltrami–Childress’ (ABC) magnetic field configurations. Topological constraints on the distribution of magnetic helicity in two-dimensional systems, identified earlier in relativistic force-free simulations, that prevent the high-$(L/\lambda _0)$ configurations from reaching the Taylor state, limit the magnetic dissipation efficiency to about $\epsilon _{\textrm {diss}} \simeq 60\,\%$. We find that the peak growth time scale of the electric energy $\tau _{E,{\textrm {peak}}}$ scales with the characteristic value of initial Alfvén velocity $\beta _{A,{\textrm {ini}}}$ like $\tau _{E,\textrm {peak}} \propto (\lambda _0/L)\beta _{A,{\textrm {ini}}}^{-3}$. The particle energy change is decomposed into non-thermal and thermal parts, with non-thermal energy gain dominant only for high initial magnetisation. The most robust description of the non-thermal high-energy part of the particle distribution is that the power-law index is a linear function of the initial magnetic energy fraction.

Keywords

plasma instabilitiesplasma simulationastrophysical plasmas
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , 905870224
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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