Strong MHD Turbulence and Coherent Structures as Drivers of Cosmic Particle Acceleration

TL;DR

This review emphasizes the central role of coherent structures like current sheets and flux ropes in MHD turbulence as key sites for particle acceleration in various astrophysical plasmas.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of coherent structures in turbulent plasma heating and acceleration, challenging the view that turbulence is mainly about cascades and spectra.

Findings

Coherent structures are the dominant dissipative elements in turbulence.

Localized electric fields in structures lead to repeated particle acceleration.

Strong turbulence links large-scale dynamics to non-thermal particle populations.

Abstract

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is a ubiquitous dynamical state of astrophysical plasmas and a primary agent in the redistribution, dissipation, and conversion of energy into particle populations. Yet turbulence is still most often described in terms of cascades, spectra, and scale-to-scale transfer, while its role in producing localized sites of intense energization remains comparatively underemphasized. In this forward-looking review, aimed at a broad astrophysical readership, I argue that any physically complete picture of turbulent plasma heating and particle acceleration must place the self-consistent emergence of coherent structures at its center. Current sheets, vortical structures, magnetic flux ropes, shocklets, and confined reconnection sites are not secondary by-products of the turbulent cascade; they are its dynamically dominant dissipative and energizing elements, where electric fields intensify, dissipation becomes highly localized, and particles undergo repeated acceleration. Viewed in this way, strong turbulence provides a unifying framework that links large-scale plasma dynamics to the generation of suprathermal particles and non-thermal energy distributions in the solar atmosphere, the solar wind, shock environments, and a wide range of other cosmic plasmas. Rather than attempting an exhaustive survey of the literature, this article offers a selective and physically organized synthesis of the field, emphasizing the mechanisms, regimes, and open problems most relevant to the development of predictive theories of particle acceleration in turbulent plasmas. It also identifies the principal conceptual and computational challenges that must be overcome if the next generation of models is to connect multiscale plasma dynamics with observable energetic-particle signatures.