Diagnosing Non-Relativistic Particle Acceleration in Low-Beta Plasma Turbulence

Rui Huang

This seminar presents a progress report on an ongoing analysis of a 3D fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) turbulence simulation by Luca Comisso and Lorenzo Sironi (2022). Their results show that turbulence in low-beta plasmas can efficiently accelerate ions and electrons to nonthermal energies, even in non-relativistic regimes.
To address the question of which physical mechanisms drive this acceleration, we apply the field–particle correlation (FPC) technique, which helps identify mechanisms by revealing the different velocity-space signatures of specific energization processes.
This is an informal presentation on preliminary results. Discussions are welcomed.