Speaker
Description
Solar activities have an extraordinary impact on interplanetary space, enriching the plasma dynamics including turbulent heating of various species. The small fraction of alpha particles is believed to play a significant role in the turbulent dynamics of the solar wind. Here we present fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to reveal the influences of the alpha particles in decaying plasma turbulence. Multiple runs with different controlled variations of proton and alpha density are performed to compare and evaluate the energy conversion processes. It is found that the alpha particles can suppress the energy conversion rate with increasing density. Besides, the alpha particles show more heating intermittency than the proton species. These two positive charge species have more correlation in temperature anisotropy as their densities are comparable. Interestingly, on the other hand, the electrons do not show any change in their dynamics, including the overall heating. Our results provide valuable insights on the turbulence with different species compositions, especially with abundant heavy particles.
