Self-organization in collisionless, high-$\beta$ turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pressure anisotropy and microinstabilities influence collisionless, high-beta plasma turbulence, revealing a self-organizing effect called magneto-immutability that sustains a nearly conservative inertial range.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of magneto-immutability in high-beta collisionless turbulence and demonstrates its role in suppressing fluctuations and maintaining MHD-like cascades.

Findings

Magneto-immutability suppresses magnetic and pressure fluctuations.

Turbulent cascade persists below viscous scales in collisionless plasmas.

Microinstabilities occupy a small volume fraction despite strong pressure anisotropy.

Abstract

The MHD equations, as a collisional fluid model that remains in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), have long been used to describe turbulence in myriad space and astrophysical plasmas. Yet, the vast majority of these plasmas, from the solar wind to the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters, are only weakly collisional at best, meaning that significant deviations from LTE are not only possible but common. Recent studies have demonstrated that the kinetic physics inherent to this weakly collisional regime can fundamentally transform the evolution of such plasmas across a wide range of scales. Here we explore the consequences of pressure anisotropy and Larmor-scale instabilities for collisionless, $\beta \gg 1$ turbulence, focusing on the role of a self-organizational effect known as `magneto-immutability'. We describe this self-organization analytically through a high-$\beta$, reduced ordering of the CGL-MHD equations, finding that it is a robust inertial-range effect that dynamically suppresses magnetic-field-strength fluctuations, anisotropic-pressure stresses, and dissipation due to heat fluxes. As a result, the turbulent cascade of Alfv\'enic fluctuations continues below the putative viscous scale to form a robust, nearly conservative, MHD-like inertial range. These findings are confirmed numerically via Landau-fluid CGL-MHD turbulence simulations that employ a collisional closure to mimic the effects of microinstabilities. We find that microinstabilities occupy a small ($\sim 5\%$) volume-filling fraction of the plasma, even when the pressure anisotropy is driven strongly towards its instability thresholds. We discuss these results in the context of recent predictions for ion-versus-electron heating in low-luminosity accretion flows and observations implying suppressed viscosity in ICM turbulence.