Resonance-broadened transit time damping of particles in MHD turbulence

TL;DR

This paper develops a generalized resonance broadening theory for particle scattering in MHD turbulence, revealing how different modes and plasma conditions influence cosmic ray and grain interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a new resonance broadening function considering magnetic fluctuations and nonlinear effects, and analyzes the relative importance of slow and fast modes in particle scattering.

Findings

Slow mode turbulence suppresses scattering efficiency due to anisotropy.

Fast modes dominate TTD scattering in most interstellar phases.

Slow modes are more effective for low-energy particles like charged grains.

Abstract

As a fundamental astrophysical process, the scattering of particles by turbulent magnetic fields has its physical foundation laid by the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence theory. In the framework of the modern theory of MHD turbulence, we derive a generalized broadened resonance function by taking into account both the magnetic fluctuations and nonlinear decorrelation of turbulent magnetic fields arising in MHD turbulence, and we specify the energy range of particles for the dominance of different broadening mechanisms. The broadened resonance allows for scattering of particles beyond the energy threshold of the linear resonance. By analytically determining the pitch-angle diffusion coefficients for transit time damping (TTD) with slow and fast modes, we demonstrate that the turbulence anisotropy of slow modes suppresses their scattering efficiency. Furthermore, we quantify the dependence of the relative importance between slow and fast modes in TTD scattering on (i) particle energy, (ii) plasma $\beta$ (the ratio of gas pressure to magnetic pressure), and (iii) damping of MHD turbulence, and we also provide the parameter space for the dominance of slow modes. To exemplify its applications, we find that among typical partially ionized interstellar phases, in the warm neutral medium slow and fast modes have comparable efficiencies in TTD scattering of cosmic rays. For low-energy particles, e.g., sub-Alfv\'{e}nic charged grains, we show that slow modes always dominate TTD scattering.