Particle energization in relativistic plasma turbulence: solenoidal versus compressive driving

TL;DR

This study compares how solenoidal and compressive turbulence driving mechanisms affect particle energization in relativistic plasma, revealing that compressive driving enhances nonthermal acceleration and ion energization.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of particle energization under solenoidal versus compressive turbulence driving in relativistic plasma using particle-in-cell simulations.

Findings

Compressively driven turbulence leads to more efficient nonthermal particle acceleration.

Both drives produce similar power-law energy distributions over different timescales.

Ion energization is significantly higher with compressive driving, especially for non-relativistic ions.

Abstract

Many high-energy astrophysical systems contain magnetized collisionless plasmas with relativistic particles, in which turbulence can be driven by an arbitrary mixture of solenoidal and compressive motions. For example, turbulence in hot accretion flows may be driven solenoidally by the magnetorotational instability or compressively by spiral shock waves. It is important to understand the role of the driving mechanism on kinetic turbulence and the associated particle energization. In this work, we compare particle-in-cell simulations of solenoidally driven turbulence with similar simulations of compressively driven turbulence. We focus on plasma that has an initial beta of unity, relativistically hot electrons, and varying ion temperature. Apart from strong large-scale density fluctuations in the compressive case, the turbulence statistics are similar for both drives, and the bulk plasma is described reasonably well by an isothermal equation of state. We find that nonthermal particle acceleration is more efficient when turbulence is driven compressively. In the case of relativistically hot ions, both driving mechanisms ultimately lead to similar power-law particle energy distributions, but over a different duration. In the case of non-relativistic ions, there is significant nonthermal particle acceleration only for compressive driving. Additionally, we find that the electron-to-ion heating ratio is less than unity for both drives, but takes a smaller value for compressive driving. We demonstrate that this additional ion energization is associated with the collisionless damping of large-scale compressive modes via perpendicular electric fields.