Strong suppression of heat conduction in a laboratory replica of galaxy-cluster turbulent plasmas

Meinecke, Jena and Tzeferacos, Petros and Ross, James S. and Bott, Archie F. A. and Feister, Scott and Park, Hye-Sook and Bell, Anthony R. and Blandford, Roger and Berger, Richard L. and Bingham, Robert and Casner, Alexis and Chen, Laura E. and Foster, John and Froula, Dustin H. and Goyon, Clement and Kalantar, Daniel and Koenig, Michel and Lahmann, Brandon and Li, Chikang and Lu, Yingchao and Palmer, Charlotte A. J. and Petrasso, Richard D. and Poole, Hannah and Remington, Bruce and Reville, Brian and Reyes, Adam and Rigby, Alexandra and Ryu, Dongsu and Swadling, George and Zylstra, Alex and Miniati, Francesco and Sarkar, Subir and Schekochihin, Alexander A. and Lamb, Donald Q. and Gregori, Gianluca (2022) Strong suppression of heat conduction in a laboratory replica of galaxy-cluster turbulent plasmas. Science Advances, 8 (10). eabj6799. ISSN 2375-2548 (https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj6799)

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Abstract

In conventional gases and plasmas, it is known that heat fluxes are proportional to temperature gradients, with collisions between particles mediating energy flow from hotter to colder regions and the coefficient of thermal conduction given by Spitzer's theory. However, this theory breaks down in magnetized, turbulent, weakly collisional plasmas, although modifications are difficult to predict from first principles due to the complex, multiscale nature of the problem. Understanding heat transport is important in astrophysical plasmas such as those in galaxy clusters, where observed temperature profiles are explicable only in the presence of a strong suppression of heat conduction compared to Spitzer's theory. To address this problem, we have created a replica of such a system in a laser laboratory experiment. Our data show a reduction of heat transport by two orders of magnitude or more, leading to large temperature variations on small spatial scales (as is seen in cluster plasmas).

  • Item type:Article
    ID code:79959
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    9 March 2022
    Published
    19 January 2022
    Accepted
    Subjects:Science > Physics
    Department:Faculty of Science > Physics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:24 Mar 2022 15:05
    Last modified:09 Apr 2024 03:07
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/79959
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