Dynamo in weakly collisional non-magnetized plasmas impeded by Landau damping of magnetic fields

by Dr István Pusztai [postponed to some later date!] (Chalmers University of Technology)

Thursday 19 Mar 2020, 10:30 → 11:15 Europe/Stockholm

122:026

We perform fully kinetic simulations of flows known to produce dynamo in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), considering scenarios with low Reynolds number and high magnetic Prandtl number, relevant for galaxy cluster scale fluctuation dynamos. We find that Landau damping on the electrons leads to a rapid decay of magnetic perturbations, impeding the dynamo. This collisionless damping process operates on spatial scales where electrons are non-magnetized, reducing the range of scales where the magnetic field grows in high magnetic Prandtl number fluctuation dynamos. When electrons are not magnetized down to the resistive scale, the magnetic energy spectrum is expected to be limited by the scale corresponding to magnetic Landau damping or, if smaller, the electron gyro-radius scale, instead of the resistive scale. In simulations we thus observe decaying magnetic fields where resistive MHD would predict a dynamo.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.11929