TY - JOUR
KW - Space and Planetary Science
KW - Astronomy and Astrophysics
AU - Amelia Hankla
AU - Vladimir Zhdankin
AU - Gregory Werner
AU - Dmitri Uzdensky
AU - Mitchell Begelman
AB - Turbulent high-energy astrophysical systems often feature asymmetric energy injection: for instance, Alfvén waves propagating from an accretion disc into its corona. Such systems are ‘imbalanced’: the energy fluxes parallel and antiparallel to the large-scale magnetic field are unequal. In the past, numerical studies of imbalanced turbulence have focused on the magnetohydrodynamic regime. In this study, we investigate externally driven imbalanced turbulence in a collision-less, ultrarelativistically hot, magnetized pair plasma using 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We find that the injected electromagnetic momentum efficiently converts into plasma momentum, resulting in net motion along the background magnetic field with speeds up to a significant fraction of lightspeed. This discovery has important implications for the launching of accretion disc winds. We also find that although particle acceleration in imbalanced turbulence operates on a slower time-scale than in balanced turbulence, it ultimately produces a power-law energy distribution similar to balanced turbulence. Our results have ramifications for black hole accretion disc coronae, winds, and jets.
BT - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
DA - 2022-01
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stab3209
IS - 3
N2 - Turbulent high-energy astrophysical systems often feature asymmetric energy injection: for instance, Alfvén waves propagating from an accretion disc into its corona. Such systems are ‘imbalanced’: the energy fluxes parallel and antiparallel to the large-scale magnetic field are unequal. In the past, numerical studies of imbalanced turbulence have focused on the magnetohydrodynamic regime. In this study, we investigate externally driven imbalanced turbulence in a collision-less, ultrarelativistically hot, magnetized pair plasma using 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We find that the injected electromagnetic momentum efficiently converts into plasma momentum, resulting in net motion along the background magnetic field with speeds up to a significant fraction of lightspeed. This discovery has important implications for the launching of accretion disc winds. We also find that although particle acceleration in imbalanced turbulence operates on a slower time-scale than in balanced turbulence, it ultimately produces a power-law energy distribution similar to balanced turbulence. Our results have ramifications for black hole accretion disc coronae, winds, and jets.
PB - Oxford University Press (OUP)
PY - 2022
SP - 3826
EP - 3841
T2 - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
TI - Kinetic simulations of imbalanced turbulence in a relativistic plasma: Net flow and particle acceleration
UR - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/509/3/3826/6424941?login=true
VL - 509
SN - 0035-8711, 1365-2966
ER -