The study of nonlinear waves in water has a long history beginning with the seminal paper by Korteweg & de Vries (Phil. Mag., vol. 39, 1895, p. 240) and more recently for magnetohydrodynamics Danov & Ruderman (Fluid Dyn., vol. 18, 1983, pp. 751–756). The appearance of a Hilbert transform in the nonlinear equation for magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) distinguishes it from the water wave model description. In this paper, we are interested in examining weakly nonlinear interfacial waves in $2+1$ dimensions. First, we determine the wave solution in the linear case. Next, we derive the corresponding generalisation for the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili (KP) equation with the inclusion of an equilibrium magnetic field. The derived governing equation is a generalisation of the Benjamin–Ono (BO) equation called the Benjamin equation first derived in Benjamin (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 245, 1992, pp. 401–411) and in the higher-dimensional context in Kim & Akylas (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 557, 2006, pp. 237–256).

Wave dispersion in a pulsar plasma (a one-dimensional, strongly magnetized, pair plasma streaming highly relativistically with a large spread in Lorentz factors in its rest frame) is discussed, motivated by interest in beam-driven wave turbulence and the pulsar radio emission mechanism. In the rest frame of the pulsar plasma there are three wave modes in the low-frequency, non-gyrotropic approximation. For parallel propagation (wave angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}=0$) these are referred to as the X, A and L modes, with the X and A modes having dispersion relation $|z|=z_{\text{A}}\approx 1-1/2\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{\text{A}}^{2}$, where $z=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}/k_{\Vert }c$ is the phase speed and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{\text{A}}c$ is the Alfvén speed. The L mode dispersion relation is determined by a relativistic plasma dispersion function, $z^{2}W(z)$, which is negative for $|z|<z_{0}$ and has a sharp maximum at $|z|=z_{\text{m}}$, with $1-z_{\text{m}}<1-z_{0}\ll 1$. We give numerical estimates for the maximum of $z^{2}W(z)$ and for $z_{\text{m}}$ and $z_{0}$ for a one-dimensional Jüttner distribution. The L and A modes reconnect, for $z_{\text{A}}>z_{0}$, to form the O and Alfvén modes for oblique propagation ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\neq 0$). For $z_{\text{A}}<z_{0}$ the Alfvén and O mode curves reconnect forming a new mode that exists only for $\tan ^{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\gtrsim z_{0}^{2}-z_{\text{A}}^{2}$. The L mode is the nearest counterpart to Langmuir waves in a non-relativistic plasma, but we argue that there are no ‘Langmuir-like’ waves in a pulsar plasma, identifying three features of the L mode (dispersion relation, ratio of electric to total energy and group speed) that are not Langmuir like. A beam-driven instability requires a beam speed equal to the phase speed of the wave. This resonance condition can be satisfied for the O mode, but only for an implausibly energetic beam and only for a tiny range of angles for the O mode around $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\approx 0$. The resonance is also possible for the Alfvén mode but only near a turnover frequency that has no counterpart for Alfvén waves in a non-relativistic plasma.

Ion motion in a collisionless shock front is affected by macroscopic large-scale weakly varying and microscopic small-scale fast varying magnetic and electric fields. With the increase of the Mach number the role of the microscopic field is expected to become progressively more important. Using a combination of hybrid simulations and test particle analysis, we show that in moderately supercritical shocks macroscopic fields play the main role in ion motion across the shock. Pressure balance across the shock is only weakly broken and non-stationarity is related to the deviations from the total pressure from the constant value.

It is shown that an electron, positron and ion plasma can be self-organized to a double Beltrami state – the superposition of two force-free states. The scale parameters which determine the nature of the self-organized structures are found to depend on the number densities of the plasma species. The loss of equilibrium in slowly evolving double Beltrmi states is investigated. The effects of density ratios, helicities, positron flows and energy on equilibrium are investigated. It is found that the double Beltrami state transforms to a single Beltrami state at the termination of equilibrium. It is also shown that much of the magnetic energy converts to the flow kinetic energy through catastrophic transformation.

Turbulence is commonly observed in nearly collisionless heliospheric plasmas, including the solar wind and corona and the Earth’s magnetosphere. Understanding the collisionless mechanisms responsible for the energy transfer from the turbulent fluctuations to the particles is a frontier in kinetic turbulence research. Collisionless energy transfer from the turbulence to the particles can take place reversibly, resulting in non-thermal energy in the particle velocity distribution functions (VDFs) before eventual collisional thermalization is realized. Exploiting the information contained in the fluctuations in the VDFs is valuable. Here we apply a recently developed method based on VDFs, the field–particle correlation technique, to a $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}=1$, solar-wind-like, low-frequency Alfvénic turbulence simulation with well-resolved phase space to identify the field–particle energy transfer in velocity space. The field–particle correlations reveal that the energy transfer, mediated by the parallel electric field, results in significant structuring of the VDF in the direction parallel to the magnetic field. Fourier modes representing the length scales between the ion and electron gyroradii show that energy transfer is resonant in nature, localized in velocity space to the Landau resonances for each Fourier mode. The energy transfer closely follows the Landau resonant velocities with varying perpendicular wavenumber $k_{\bot }$ and plasma $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$. This resonant signature, consistent with Landau damping, is observed in all diagnosed Fourier modes that cover the dissipation range of the simulation.

The stability of conducting Taylor–Couette flows under the presence of toroidal magnetic background fields is considered. For strong enough magnetic amplitudes such magnetohydrodynamic flows are unstable against non-axisymmetric perturbations which may also transport angular momentum. In accordance with the often used diffusion approximation, one expects the angular momentum transport to be vanishing for rigid rotation. In the sense of a non-diffusive $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ effect, however, even for rigidly rotating $z$-pinches, an axisymmetric angular momentum flux appears which is directed outward (inward) for large (small) magnetic Mach numbers. The internal rotation in a magnetized rotating tank can thus never be uniform. Those particular rotation laws are used to estimate the value of the instability-induced eddy viscosity for which the non-diffusive $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ effect and the diffusive shear-induced transport compensate each other. The results provide the Shakura & Sunyaev viscosity ansatz leading to numerical values linearly growing with the applied magnetic field.

The shape gradient quantifies the change in some figure of merit resulting from differential perturbations to a shape. Shape gradients can be applied to gradient-based optimization, sensitivity analysis and tolerance calculation. An efficient method for computing the shape gradient for toroidal three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria is presented. The method is based on the self-adjoint property of the equations for driven perturbations of MHD equilibria and is similar to the Onsager symmetry of transport coefficients. Two versions of the shape gradient are considered. One describes the change in a figure of merit due to an arbitrary displacement of the outer flux surface; the other describes the change in the figure of merit due to the displacement of a coil. The method is implemented for several example figures of merit and compared with direct calculation of the shape gradient. In these examples the adjoint method reduces the number of equilibrium computations by factors of $O(N)$, where $N$ is the number of parameters used to describe the outer flux surface or coil shapes.

Acoustic solitons obtained through a reductive perturbation scheme are normally governed by a Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation. In multispecies plasmas at critical compositions the coefficient of the quadratic nonlinearity vanishes. Extending the analytic treatment then leads to a modified KdV (mKdV) equation, which is characterized by a cubic nonlinearity and is even in the electrostatic potential. The mKdV equation admits solitons having opposite electrostatic polarities, in contrast to KdV solitons which can only be of one polarity at a time. A Hirota formalism has been used to derive the two-soliton solution. That solution covers not only the interaction of same-polarity solitons but also the collision of compressive and rarefactive solitons. For the visualization of the solutions, the focus is on the details of the interaction region. A novel and detailed discussion is included of typical electric field signatures that are often observed in ionospheric and magnetospheric plasmas. It is argued that these signatures can be attributed to solitons and their interactions. As such, they have received little attention.

The effects of coherent structures in plasma edge turbulence are an important topic in the study of plasma cross-field transport in magnetically confined plasmas. To properly characterize these structures, their temperature must be measured, which is often done by using Langmuir probes. In this work, the techniques of Langmuir sweep and triple probe are used, considering the effect of plasma sheath expansion in both methods. It is shown that if the sheath expansion is ignored, the triple probe technique gives overestimated temperature values. In addition, the conditional analysis is applied to both techniques in order to evaluate the mean temperature time trace of the coherent structures. It is shown that these time traces can be distorted in the case of the triple probe technique, due to fact that coherent structures destroy the homogeneity condition on the pins array. Therefore, the sweep technique with a conditional selection of points is more suitable than the triple probe to study coherent structures related to bursts, as it performs a local measurement.

The influence of the azimuthal electron drift on anomalous erosion and the sheath profile in a stationary plasma thruster (SPT) is analysed in this article. It is found that the anomalous erosion has a self-organized structure, which is formed by the interaction between the plasma and the ceramic walls. In order to interpret the mechanism of the azimuthal erosion structure, a particle in cell (PIC) model is developed to simulate the azimuthal sheath. The results show that the electron azimuthal Hall drift due to crossed electric and magnetic field plays a key role in the azimuthal erosion evolution process. Electron Hall drift can generate an asymmetric sheath structure and induce azimuthal sheath oscillation. Furthermore, an asymmetric sheath caused by the integrated effect of the azimuthal irregular wall structure and azimuthal Hall drift will result in the azimuthal movement of ions. Based on the sheath simulated results, an erosion model is used to simulate the azimuthal erosion evolution. An asymmetric erosion profile caused by the azimuthal asymmetric ion sputtering is found.

A modified Vlasov equation is obtained by developing a covariant statistical mechanics for a system of electrons without considering the effects of the ions and including the Landau–Lifshitz equation of motion. General dispersion relations for the transverse and longitudinal modes for any temperature are expressed. The results are similar to those found by Hakim & Mangeney (Phys. Fluids, vol. 14, 1971, pp. 2751–2781) for both the modified Vlasov equation and the dispersion relations. However, for the longitudinal mode, unlike the development of Hakim and Mangeney, correct expansions are done in order to give a numerical approach to obtain the longitudinal relativistic dispersion relations for any value of the wavenumber. Accordingly, new loop solutions, with turning points, crossing the super-luminous region and the super-thermal region are found. Although the expressions for the Landau damping and the damping due to the radiation reaction force coincide with the Hakim and Mangeney results for some particular cases, in general they are different. A Landau anti-damping appears in the second branch of the loop in a small region between the cutoff point and the intersection with the super-thermal line. The analysis of this effect leads us to a kind of wave pulse. We will call them bipolar waves. The treatment contains the relativistic interactions between all the electrons in the system with retarded effects. This explain the differences with Zhang’s recent work (Phys. Plasmas, vol. 20, 2013, 092112–092132). It is shown that for low densities, the cutoff of the wave is due to the dispersion relations and not due to the radiation reaction force damping. While for both high densities and temperatures, the damping due to the radiation reaction force is important.

We study the resistive evolution of a localized self-organizing magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium. In this configuration the magnetic forces are balanced by a pressure force caused by a toroidal depression in the pressure. Equilibrium is attained when this low-pressure region prevents further expansion into the higher-pressure external plasma. We find that, for the parameters investigated, the resistive evolution of the structures follows a universal pattern when rescaled to resistive time. The finite resistivity causes both a decrease in the magnetic field strength and a finite slip of the plasma fluid against the static equilibrium. This slip is caused by a Pfirsch–Schlüter-type diffusion, similar to what is seen in tokamak equilibria. The net effect is that the configuration remains in magnetostatic equilibrium whilst it slowly grows in size. The rotational transform of the structure becomes nearly constant throughout the entire structure, and decreases according to a power law. In simulations this equilibrium is observed when highly tangled field lines relax in a high-pressure (relative to the magnetic field strength) environment, a situation that occurs when the twisted field of a coronal loop is ejected into the interplanetary solar wind. In this paper we relate this localized magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium to magnetic clouds in the solar wind.

The condition of omnigenity is investigated, and applied to the near-axis expansion of Garren & Boozer (Phys. Fluids B, vol. 3 (10), 1991a, pp. 2805–2821). Due in part to the particular analyticity requirements of the near-axis expansion, we find that, excluding quasi-symmetric solutions, only one type of omnigenity, namely quasi-isodynamicity, can be satisfied at first order in the distance from the magnetic axis. Our construction provides a parameterization of the space of such solutions, and the cylindrical reformulation and numerical method of Landreman & Sengupta (J. Plasma Phys., vol. 84 (6), 2018, 905840616); Landreman et al. (J. Plasma Phys., vol. 85 (1), 2019, 905850103), enables their efficient numerical construction.

We present a Vlasov–DArwin numerical code (ViDA) specifically designed to address plasma physics problems, where small-scale high accuracy is requested even during the nonlinear regime to guarantee a clean description of the plasma dynamics at fine spatial scales. The algorithm provides a low-noise description of proton and electron kinetic dynamics, by splitting in time the multi-advection Vlasov equation in phase space. Maxwell equations for the electric and magnetic fields are reorganized according to the Darwin approximation to remove light waves. Several numerical tests show that ViDA successfully reproduces the propagation of linear and nonlinear waves and captures the physics of magnetic reconnection. We also discuss preliminary tests of the parallelization algorithm efficiency, performed at CINECA on the Marconi-KNL cluster. ViDA will allow the running of Eulerian simulations of a non-relativistic fully kinetic collisionless plasma and it is expected to provide relevant insights into important problems of plasma astrophysics such as, for instance, the development of the turbulent cascade at electron scales and the structure and dynamics of electron-scale magnetic reconnection, such as the electron diffusion region.

In hydrodynamic and MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) turbulence, formal expressions for the transfer rates rely on integrals over wavenumber triads $(\boldsymbol{k},\boldsymbol{p},\boldsymbol{q})$ satisfying $\boldsymbol{k}+\boldsymbol{p}+\boldsymbol{q}=0$. As an example $S_{E}^{uu}(\boldsymbol{k}\mid \boldsymbol{p},\boldsymbol{q})$ denotes the kinetic energy transfer rate to the mode $\boldsymbol{k}$, from the two other modes in the triad, $\boldsymbol{p}$ and $\boldsymbol{q}$. However as noted by Kraichnan (Phys. Rev., vol. 111, 1958, pp. 1747–1747), in $S_{E}^{uu}(\boldsymbol{k}\mid \boldsymbol{p},\boldsymbol{q})$, what fraction of the energy transferred to the mode $\boldsymbol{k}$ originated from $\boldsymbol{p}$ and which from $\boldsymbol{q}$ is unknown. Such an expression is thus incongruent with the customary description of turbulence in terms of two-scale energy exchange. Notwithstanding this issue, Dar et al. (Physica D, vol. 157 (3), 2001, pp. 207–225) further decomposed these transfers into separate contributions from $\boldsymbol{p}$-to-$\boldsymbol{k}$ and $\boldsymbol{q}$-to-$\boldsymbol{k}$, thus introducing the concept of mode-to-mode transfers that they applied to MHD turbulence. Doing so, they had to set aside additional transfers circulating within each triad, but failed to calculate them. In the present paper we explain how to derive the complete expressions of the mode-to-mode transfers, including the circulating transfers. We do it for kinetic energy and kinetic helicity in hydrodynamic turbulence, for kinetic energy, magnetic energy and magnetic helicity in MHD turbulence. We find that the degree of non-uniqueness of the energy transfers derived from the induction equation is a priori higher than the one derived from the Navier–Stokes equations. However, separating the contribution of magnetic advection from magnetic stretching, the energy mode-to-mode transfer rates involving the magnetic field become uniquely defined, in striking contrast to the hydrodynamic case. The magnetic helicity mode-to-mode transfer rate is also found to be uniquely defined, contrary to kinetic helicity in hydrodynamics. We find that shell-to-shell transfer rates have the same properties as mode-to-mode transfer rates. Finally calculating the fluxes, we show how the circulating transfers cancel in accordance with conservation laws.

An analytical study of the small amplitude electron acoustic double layers in a magnetized plasma consisting of superthermal electrons and ions along with cold fluid electrons is discussed. The dispersion relation allows electron acoustic waves with the frequency within electron and ion gyro-frequency in the modelled plasma. In the process of study of the nonlinear structures, the Sagdeev pseudo-potential method for small amplitude regions is employed. The existence domains for the double layers are investigated in terms of the Mach numbers of the structures and the temperature ratios of the species for different ratios of their concentration. The effects of the compositional parameters on the nature and size of the double layers are also explored and it is observed that the plasma can support both compressive and rarefactive double layers depending on the values of those parameters and the Mach numbers.

Stellarators are generically small current and low plasma beta devices. Often the construction of vacuum magnetic fields with good magnetic surfaces is the starting point for an equilibrium calculation. Although in cases with some continuous spatial symmetry, flux functions can always be found for vacuum magnetic fields, an analogous function does not, in general, exist in three dimensions. This work examines several simple equilibria and vacuum magnetic field problems with the intent of demonstrating the possibilities and limitations in the construction of such states. Starting with a simple vacuum magnetic field with closed field lines in a topological torus (toroidal shell with a flat metric), we obtain a self-consistent formal perturbation series using the amplitude of the non-symmetric vacuum fields as a small parameter. We show that systems possessing stellarator symmetry allow the construction order by order. We further indicate the significance of stellarator symmetry in the amplitude expansion of the full ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) problem as well. We then investigate the conditions that guarantee neighbouring flux surfaces given the data on one surface, by expanding in the distance from that surface. We show that it is much more difficult to find low shear vacuum fields with surfaces than force-free fields or ideal MHD equilibrium. Finally, we demonstrate the existence of a class of vacuum magnetic fields, analogous to ‘snakes’ observed in tokamaks, which can be expanded to all orders.

We present an ideal two-fluid wave mode analysis for a pair plasma, extending an earlier study for cold conditions to the warm pair plasma case. Starting from the completely symmetrized means for writing the governing linearized equations in the pair fluid rest frame, we discuss the governing dispersion relation containing all six pairs of forward and backward propagating modes, which are conveniently labelled as S, A, F, M, O and X. These relate to the slow (S), Alfvén (A) and fast (F) magnetohydrodynamic waves, include a modified (M) electrostatic mode, as well as the electromagnetic O and X branches. In the dispersion relation, only two parameters appear, which define the pair plasma magnetization $E^{2}\in [0,\infty ]$ and the squared pair plasma sound speed $v^{2}$, measured in units of the light speed $c$. The description is valid also in the highly relativistic regime, where either a high magnetization and/or a relativistic temperature (hence sound speed) is reached. We recover the exact relativistic single-fluid magnetohydrodynamic expressions for the S, A and F families in the low wavenumber–frequency regime, which can be obtained for any choice of the equation of state. We argue that, as in a cold pair plasma, purely parallel or purely perpendicular propagation with respect to the magnetic field vector $\boldsymbol{B}$ is special, and near-parallel or near-perpendicular orientations demonstrate avoided crossings of branches at computable wavenumbers and frequencies. The complete six-mode phase and group diagram views are provided as well, visually demonstrating the intricate anisotropies in all wave modes, as well as their transformations. Analytic expressions for all six wave group speeds at both small and large wavenumbers complement the analysis.

Beam-driven instabilities are considered in a pulsar plasma assuming that both the background plasma and the beam are relativistic Jüttner distributions. In the rest frame of the background, the only waves that can satisfy the resonance condition are in a tiny range of slightly subluminal phase speeds. The growth rate for the kinetic (or maser) version of the weak-beam instability is much smaller than has been estimated for a relativistically streaming Gaussian distribution, and the reasons for this are discussed. The growth rate for the reactive version of the weak-beam instability is treated in a conventional way. We compare the results with exact calculations, and find that the approximate solutions are not consistent with the exact results. We conclude that, for plausible parameters, there is no reactive version of the instability. The growth rate in the pulsar frame is smaller than that in the rest frame of the background plasma by a factor $2\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{\text{s}}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{\text{s}}=10^{2}{-}10^{3}$ is the Lorentz factor of the bulk motion of the background plasma, placing a further constraint on effective wave growth. Based on these results, we argue that beam-driven wave growth probably plays no role in pulsar radio emission.

In strictly collisionless electrostatic shocks, the ion distribution function can develop discontinuities along phase-space separatrices, due to partial reflection of the ion population. In this paper, we depart from the strictly collisionless regime and present a semi-analytical model for weakly collisional kinetic shocks. The model is used to study the effect of small but finite collisionalities on electrostatic shocks, and they are found to smooth out these discontinuities into growing boundary layers. More importantly, ions diffuse into and accumulate in the previously empty regions of phase space, and, by upsetting the charge balance, lead to growing downstream oscillations of the electrostatic potential. We find that the collisional age of the shock is the more relevant measure of the collisional effects than the collisionality, where the former can become significant during the lifetime of the shock, even for weak collisionalities.