Abstract. The extended magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) system, including the Hall effect and the electron inertia effect, has a Hamiltonian structure embodied by a noncanonical Poisson algebra on an infinitedimensional phase space. A nontrivial part of the formulation is the proof of Jacobi's identity for the Poisson bracket. We unearth a basic Lie algebra that generates the Poisson bracket. A class of similar Poisson algebra may be generated by the same Lie algebra, which encompasses the Hall MHD system and inertial MHD system.
SignificanceLarge-scale astrophysical processes inject energy into turbulent motions and electromagnetic fields, which carry this energy to small scales and eventually thermalize it. How this energy is partitioned between ions and electrons is important both in plasma physics and in astrophysics. Here we determine this energy partition via gyrokinetic turbulence simulations and provide a simple prescription for the ion-to-electron heating ratio. We find that turbulence promotes disequilibration of the species: When magnetic energy density is greater than the thermal energy density, electrons are preferentially heated, whereas when it is smaller, ions are. This is a relatively rare example of nature promoting an ever more out-of-equilibrium state in an environment where particle collisions are not frequent enough to equalize the temperatures of the species.
It is shown that in low-beta, weakly collisional plasmas, such as the solar corona, some instances of the solar wind, the aurora, inner regions of accretion discs, their coronae, and some laboratory plasmas, Alfvénic fluctuations produce no ion heating within the gyrokinetic approximation, i.e., as long as their amplitudes (at the Larmor scale) are small and their frequencies stay below the ion Larmor frequency (even as their spatial scales can be above or below the ion Larmor scale). Thus, all low-frequency ion heating in such plasmas is due to compressive fluctuations ("slow modes"): density perturbations and non-Maxwellian perturbations of the ion distribution function. Because these fluctuations energetically decouple from the Alfvénic ones already in the inertial range, the above conclusion means that the energy partition between ions and electrons in low-beta plasmas is decided at the outer scale, where turbulence is launched, and can be determined from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models of the relevant astrophysical systems. Any additional ion heating must come from non-gyrokinetic mechanisms such as cyclotron heating or the stochastic heating owing to distortions of ions' Larmor orbits. An exception to these conclusions occurs in the Hall limit, i.e., when the ratio of the ion to electron temperatures is as low as the ion beta (equivalently, the electron beta is order unity). In this regime, slow modes couple to Alfvénic ones well above the Larmor scale (viz., at the ion inertial or ion sound scale), so the Alfvénic and compressive cascades join and then separate again into two cascades of fluctuations that linearly resemble kinetic Alfvén and ion cyclotron waves, with the former heating electrons and the latter ions. The two cascades are shown to decouple, scalings for them are derived, and it is argued physically that the two species will be heated by them at approximately equal rates. †
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.