Turbulent heating in an inhomogeneous, magnetised plasma slab

TL;DR

This paper investigates how turbulence in a magnetized plasma slab causes preferential heating of ions over electrons, especially when their thermal speeds differ, leading to temperature equalization or ion heating.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the universal instability induces turbulent energy exchange that tends to equalize thermal speeds and heats ions more than electrons in inhomogeneous plasma slabs.

Findings

Turbulent energy exchange acts to equalize electron and ion thermal speeds.

Ion temperatures can become significantly higher than electron temperatures.

Universal instability drives turbulence that influences plasma heating dynamics.

Abstract

Observational evidence in space and astrophysical plasmas with long collisional mean free path suggests that more massive charged particles may be preferentially heated. One possible mechanism for this is the turbulent cascade of energy from injection to dissipation scales, where the energy is converted to heat. Here we consider a simple system consisting of a magnetized plasma slab of electrons and a single ion species with a cross-field density gradient. We show that such a system is subject to an electron drift wave instability, known as the universal instability, which is stabilized only when the electron and ion thermal speeds are equal. For unequal thermal speeds, we find that the instability gives rise to turbulent energy exchange between ions and electrons that acts to equalize the thermal speeds. Consequently, this turbulent heating tends to equalize the component temperatures of pair plasmas and to heat ions to much higher temperatures than electrons for conventional mass-ratio plasmas.