@article{12692,
  keywords = {Space and Planetary Science, Astronomy and Astrophysics},
  author = {Amelia Hankla and Vladimir Zhdankin and Gregory Werner and Dmitri Uzdensky and Mitchell Begelman},
  title = {Kinetic simulations of imbalanced turbulence in a relativistic plasma: Net flow and particle acceleration},
  abstract = {Turbulent high-energy astrophysical systems often feature asymmetric energy injection: for instance, Alfvén waves propagating from an accretion disc into its corona. Such systems are ‘imbalanced’: the energy fluxes parallel and antiparallel to the large-scale magnetic field are unequal. In the past, numerical studies of imbalanced turbulence have focused on the magnetohydrodynamic regime. In this study, we investigate externally driven imbalanced turbulence in a collision-less, ultrarelativistically hot, magnetized pair plasma using 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We find that the injected electromagnetic momentum efficiently converts into plasma momentum, resulting in net motion along the background magnetic field with speeds up to a significant fraction of lightspeed. This discovery has important implications for the launching of accretion disc winds. We also find that although particle acceleration in imbalanced turbulence operates on a slower time-scale than in balanced turbulence, it ultimately produces a power-law energy distribution similar to balanced turbulence. Our results have ramifications for black hole accretion disc coronae, winds, and jets.},
  year = {2022},
  journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  volume = {509},
  pages = {3826-3841},
  month = {2022-01},
  publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)},
  issn = {0035-8711, 1365-2966},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/509/3/3826/6424941?login=true},
  doi = {10.1093/mnras/stab3209},
}