# Proton-proton collisions in the turbulent solar wind: Hybrid Boltzmann-Maxwell simulations

## TL;DR

This study uses hybrid Boltzmann-Maxwell simulations to investigate how proton-proton collisions affect turbulence and energy dissipation in turbulent solar wind plasmas, revealing that collisions damp nonthermal features and enstrophy cascades.

## Contribution

It introduces explicit proton-proton collisions via the nonlinear Dougherty operator into turbulence simulations, highlighting their role in dissipation and suppression of velocity-space cascades.

## Key findings

- Collisions do not significantly alter turbulence statistics.
- Collisions dissipate nonthermal features in proton distributions.
- Collisions suppress enstrophy and entropy cascades in velocity space.

## Abstract

The mechanism of heating for hot, dilute, and turbulent plasmas represents a long-standing problem in space physics, whose implications concern both near-Earth environments and astrophysical systems. In order to explore the possible role of interparticle collisions, simulations of plasma turbulence -- in both collisionless and weakly collisional regimes -- have been compared by adopting Eulerian Hybrid Boltzmann-Maxwell simulations, being proton-proton collisions explicitly introduced through the nonlinear Dougherty operator. Although collisions do not significantly influence the statistical characteristics of the turbulence, they dissipate nonthermal features in the proton distribution function and suppress the enstrophy/entropy cascade in the velocity space, damping the spectral transfer toward large Hermite modes. This enstrophy dissipation is particularly effective in regions where the plasma distribution function is strongly distorted, suggesting that collisional effects are enhanced by fine velocity-space structures. A qualitative connection between the turbulent energy cascade in fluids and the enstrophy cascade in plasmas has been established, opening a new path to the understanding of astrophysical plasma turbulence