Plasma Turbulence at Sub-proton Scales: Two-fluid and Full-kinetic Plasma Description

C.A. GONZALEZ , T. PARASHAR , D. G ́OMEZ , W.H. MATTHAEUS , P. DMITRUK

Conferencia; COLAGE XI - Eleventh Latin American Conference on Space Geophysics; 2018

lasma is a multi-scale problem which involves many spatial and temporal scalesfrom wave up to particle phenomena. Turbulence is the process that connect all the scales onthe system and is the way the energy is transported from the macro-scale and then dissipated inthe micro-scale by non-ideal interactions. One can model the plasma as the temporal evolutionof the ensemble of charged particles interacting with the electromagnetic fields under the Vlasovequation. Otherwise the plasma can be modeled as the average dynamic of the macroscopicquantities that are governed by the fluid equations. In plasma turbulence studies it is oftenassumed a single-fluid model where the large-scale of the system is well represented by themagnetohydrodynamics approach but the problem with that approach is that the physics atsub-proton scales can not be resolved. In order to study the plasma turbulence at sub-protonscales We employed systematic comparison of a two-fluid simulation which contains some kineticeffects (Hall and electron inertia effects) and also we used a full kinetic particle-in-cell simulationusing the closest possible initial setup for both numerical schemes. We also studied the electricfield at the corresponding scales through the breakdown of the generalized Ohm?s law termsfor both simulations with the aim to uncover which terms of the electric fields are important at sub-proton scales.