Jason TenBarge, University of Maryland

Title: "Kinetic Plasma Turbulence in Space and Astrophysical Plasmas" (Video)

Abstract:  Turbulence is a ubiquitous process in space and astrophysical plasmas that serves to mediate the transfer of large-scale motions to small scales at which the turbulence can be dissipated and the plasma heated. The nature of the dissipation and heating ultimately determines the amount and type of radiation we observe from many distant astrophysical objects, such as black hole accretion discs. Closer to home, the dissipation of turbulence may be responsible for the anomalous heating of the solar corona, wherein the upper atmosphere of the sun is orders of magnitude hotter than the solar surface. Most of these systems of interest are weakly collisional, implying that they may be far from thermal equilibrium, which necessitates a kinetic rather than fluid treatment. In this talk, I will discuss recent progress toward understanding dissipation in kinetic plasmas, both within the confines of an asymptotically ordered kinetic system, gyrokinetics, and in full, continuum kinetic models.