Relativistic Alfvén turbulence at kinetic scales (2402.16218v2)

Abstract: In a strongly magnetized, magnetically dominated relativistic plasma, Alfv\'enic turbulence can extend to scales much smaller than the particle inertial scales. It leads to an energy cascade somewhat analogous to inertial- or kinetic-Alfv\'en turbulent cascades existing in non-relativistic space and astrophysical plasmas. Based on phenomenological modeling and particle-in-cell numerical simulations, we propose that the energy spectrum of such relativistic kinetic-scale Alfv\'enic turbulence is close to $k^{-3}$ or slightly steeper than that due to intermittency corrections or Landau damping. We note the analogy of this spectrum with the Kraichnan spectrum corresponding to the enstrophy cascade in 2D incompressible fluid turbulence. Such turbulence strongly energizes particles in the direction parallel to the background magnetic field, leading to nearly one-dimensional particle momentum distributions. We find that these distributions have universal log-normal statistics.