TY - JOUR A1 - Santos de Lima, Reinaldo A1 - Yan, Huirong A1 - de Gouveia Dal Pino, E. M. A1 - Lazarian, A. T1 - Limits on the ion temperature anisotropy in the turbulent intracluster medium JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Turbulence in the weakly collisional intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxies is able to generate strong thermal velocity anisotropies in the ions (with respect to the local magnetic field direction), if the magnetic moment of the particles is conserved in the absence of Coulomb collisions. In this scenario, the anisotropic pressure magnetohydrodynamic (AMHD) turbulence shows a very different statistical behaviour from the standard MHD one and is unable to amplify seed magnetic fields. This is in contrast to previous cosmological MHD simulations that are successful in explaining the observed magnetic fields in the ICM. On the other hand, temperature anisotropies can also drive plasma instabilities that can relax the anisotropy. This work aims to compare the relaxation rate with the growth rate of the anisotropies driven by the turbulence. We employ quasi-linear theory to estimate the ion scattering rate resulting from the parallel firehose, mirror and ion-cyclotron instabilities, for a set of plasma parameters resulting from AMHD simulations of the turbulent ICM. We show that the ICM turbulence can sustain only anisotropy levels very close to the instability thresholds. We argue that the AMHD model that bounds the anisotropies at the marginal stability levels can describe the Alfv,nic turbulence cascade in the ICM. KW - MHD KW - plasmas KW - turbulence KW - galaxies: clusters: intracluster medium Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw1079 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 460 SP - 2492 EP - 2504 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Xu, Siyao A1 - Yan, Huirong A1 - Lazarian, A. T1 - DAMPING OF MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC TURBULENCE IN PARTIALLY IONIZED PLASMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR COSMIC RAY PROPAGATION JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics N2 - We study the damping processes of both incompressible and compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in a partially ionized medium. We start from the linear analysis of MHD waves, applying both single-fluid and two-fluid treatments. The damping rates derived from the linear analysis are then used in determining the damping scales of MHD turbulence. The physical connection between the damping scale of MHD turbulence and the cutoff boundary of linear MHD waves is investigated. We find two branches of slow modes propagating in ions and neutrals, respectively, below the damping scale of slow MHD turbulence, and offer a thorough discussion of their propagation and dissipation behavior. Our analytical results are shown to be applicable in a variety of partially ionized interstellar medium (ISM) phases and the solar chromosphere. The importance of neutral viscosity in damping the Alfvenic turbulence in the interstellar warm neutral medium and the solar chromosphere is demonstrated. As a significant astrophysical utility, we introduce damping effects to the propagation of cosmic rays in partially ionized ISM. The important role of turbulence damping in both transit-time damping and gyroresonance is identified. KW - cosmic rays KW - magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) KW - turbulence Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/826/2/166 SN - 0004-637X SN - 1538-4357 VL - 826 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ge, J. X. A1 - He, J. H. A1 - Yan, Huirong T1 - Effects of turbulent dust grain motion to interstellar chemistry JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Theoretical studies have revealed that dust grains are usually moving fast through the turbulent interstellar gas, which could have significant effects upon interstellar chemistry by modifying grain accretion. This effect is investigated in this work on the basis of numerical gas-grain chemical modelling. Major features of the grain motion effect in the typical environment of dark clouds (DC) can be summarized as follows: (1) decrease of gas-phase (both neutral and ionic) abundances and increase of surface abundances by up to 2-3 orders of magnitude; (2) shifts of the existing chemical jumps to earlier evolution ages for gas-phase species and to later ages for surface species by factors of about 10; (3) a few exceptional cases in which some species turn out to be insensitive to this effect and some other species can show opposite behaviours too. These effects usually begin to emerge from a typical DC model age of about 10(5) yr. The grain motion in a typical cold neutral medium (CNM) can help overcome the Coulomb repulsive barrier to enable effective accretion of cations on to positively charged grains. As a result, the grain motion greatly enhances the abundances of some gas-phase and surface species by factors up to 2-6 or more orders of magnitude in the CNM model. The grain motion effect in a typical molecular cloud (MC) is intermediate between that of the DC and CNM models, but with weaker strength. The grain motion is found to be important to consider in chemical simulations of typical interstellar medium. KW - astrochemistry KW - turbulence KW - ISM: abundances KW - ISM: clouds KW - dust, extinction KW - ISM: molecules Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv2560 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 455 SP - 3570 EP - 3587 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lebiga, O. A1 - Santos-Lima, Reinaldo A1 - Yan, Huirong T1 - Kinetic-MHD simulations of gyroresonance instability driven by CR pressure anisotropy JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - The transport of cosmic rays (CRs) is crucial for the understanding of almost all high-energy phenomena. Both pre-existing large-scale magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence and locally generated turbulence through plasma instabilities are important for the CR propagation in astrophysical media. The potential role of the resonant instability triggered by CR pressure anisotropy to regulate the parallel spatial diffusion of low-energy CRs (less than or similar to 100 GeV) in the interstellar and intracluster medium of galaxies has been shown in previous theoretical works. This work aims to study the gyroresonance instability via direct numerical simulations, in order to access quantitatively the wave-particle scattering rates. For this, we employ a 1D PIC-MHD code to follow the growth and saturation of the gyroresonance instability. We extract from the simulations the pitch-angle diffusion coefficient D-mu mu produced by the instability during the linear and saturation phases, and a very good agreement (within a factor of 3) is found with the values predicted by the quasi-linear theory (QLT). Our results support the applicability of the QLT for modelling the scattering of low-energy CRs by the gyroresonance instability in the complex interplay between this instability and the large-scale MHD turbulence. KW - MHD KW - plasmas KW - turbulence KW - cosmic rays Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty309 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 476 IS - 2 SP - 2779 EP - 2791 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zhang, Heshou A1 - Yan, Huirong T1 - Polarization of submillimetre lines from interstellar medium JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Magnetic fields play important roles in many astrophysical processes. However, there is no universal diagnostic for the magnetic fields in the interstellar medium (ISM) and each magnetic tracer has its limitation. Any new detection method is thus valuable. Theoretical studies have shown that submillimetre fine-structure lines are polarized due to atomic alignment by ultraviolet photon-excitation, which opens up a new avenue to probe interstellar magnetic fields. We will, for the first time, perform synthetic observations on the simulated three-dimensional ISM to demonstrate the measurability of the polarization of submillimetre atomic lines. The maximum polarization for different absorption and emission lines expected from various sources, including star-forming regions are provided. Our results demonstrate that the polarization of submillimetre atomic lines is a powerful magnetic tracer and add great value to the observational studies of the submilimetre astronomy. KW - polarization KW - turbulence KW - H II regions KW - ISM: magnetic fields KW - photodissociation region (PDR) KW - submillimetre: ISM Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx3164 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 475 IS - 2 SP - 2415 EP - 2420 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER -