Flow-Regulated Suprathermal Particle Acceleration in Weakly Collisional Astrophysical Plasmas
New research explores suprathermal particle acceleration in weakly collisional plasmas, introducing a novel velocity-space drift term to model competing energization and relaxation processes.
Researchers have developed a one-dimensional Fokker-Planck model to study how suprathermal particles are formed in weakly collisional plasmas.
A key innovation is a systematic velocity-space drift term that quantifies net energization relative to a background streaming flow, incorporating large-scale plasma dynamics into kinetic particle evolution.
The study investigates the impact of accelerating, decelerating, and steady streaming flows, finding that velocity-space diffusion plays a primary role in the formation of suprathermal tails.
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