Speaker
Kirit Makwana
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P2.4013.pdf
Current sheets in kinetic simulations of plasma turbulence between ion
and electron scales
Kirit Makwana1
1 Center for mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Dept. of Mathematics, KU Leuven, Belgium
We present 3D PIC simulations of plasma turbulence relevant for turbulence in the solar
wind. These are performed by initializing an ensemble of shear Alfven waves with wavelengths
moderately larger than the ion skin depth scale. In earlier work such simulations were performed
with ion-positron pair plasmas [1, 2]. Now we use a reduced but non-unity mass ratio between
ions and electrons. This allows us to investigate the range of scales between ion and electron skin
depth. We present the turbulent spectrum between the ion and electron scales and an analysis of
the current sheets that form in this range. This is relevant for observations of current sheets in
solar wind turbulence.
References
[1] K. D. Makwana, V. Zhdankin, H. Li, W. Daughton and F. Cattaneo, Physics of Plasmas 22, 042902 (2015)
[2] Kirit Makwana, Hui Li, Fan Guo, and Xiaocan Li, Journal of Physics: Conference Series 831, 012004 (2017)
