Gyrofluid vortex interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gyroinduced effects alter vortex interactions in magnetised plasma turbulence, revealing phenomena like vortex spiraling, asymmetric merging, and filamentation into thin vorticity sheets.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of gyrospinning and demonstrates how gyrofluid effects fundamentally modify vortex dynamics in plasma turbulence.

Findings

Gyroinduced vortex spiraling significantly alters vortex interactions.

Asymmetry in initial density influences vortex merging or explosion.

Warm gyrofluid turbulence exhibits filamentation into thin vorticity sheets.

Abstract

Low-frequency turbulence in magnetised plasmas is intrisically influenced by gyroscale effects across ion Larmor orbits. Here we show that fundamental vortex interactions like merging and co-advection in gyrofluid plasmas are essentially modified under the influence of gyroinduced vortex spiraling. For identical initial vorticity, the fate of co-rotating eddies is decided between accelerated merging or explosion by the asymmetry of initial density distributions. Structures in warm gyrofluid turbulence are characterised by gyrospinning enhanced filamentation into thin vorticity sheets.