arXiv subjects

Emanuele Papini

Publications and source records attributed to Emanuele Papini.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Shear interaction and acceleration of a corotating stream detected by Parker Solar Probe

Recent analysis of Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and Solar Orbiter data indicates that fluctuations energy is transferred to the bulk flow in fast streams of the solar wind at heliocentric distances between 15 and 120 Rsun. To gain insight into this process, we analyze data collected during the inbound orbit of PSP in Encounter 10, when it is in approximate corotation with the Sun and an accelerating stream is detected between 25 and 45 Rsun. The geometry of the flow indicates that a neighboring very fast streams is colliding with the corotating stream, causing large-scale magnetic field distortion, density enhancement, and acceleration. However, also deposition of fluctuations' energy can heat and do work on the solar wind plasma, resulting in a radial acceleration. We evaluate the energy lost by fluctuations via radial variation of conserved quantities in the corotating stream and find that it is almost equally partitioned into heating and work. While the heating is marginally consistent with the non-adiabatic decrease of proton temperature, the work exerted on the wind is insufficient to account for the measured solar wind acceleration. Although limited to this event, observations suggest that shear interaction is capable of accelerating slower streams within relatively short distances from the Sun, possibly leaving its imprint as large-scale density and magnetic fluctuations.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Self-organization of local streamline structures and energy transfer rate in compressible plasma turbulence

We examine how local streamline topology and energy cascade rate self-organize in plasma turbulence for both compressible and incompressible regimes. Using a fully-compressible Hall-magnetohydrodynamic simulation, we quantify the subgrid-scale energy transfer and analyze its relationship to streamline structures by means of grandient tensor geometric invariants of the velocity field. Our results highlight how streamline topology is crucial for diagnosing turbulence: for nearly-incompressible fluctuations the energy is primarily transferred to smaller scales through strain-dominated and stable-vortical structures, while is back-transferred towards larger scales through unstable-vortical structures. Compressible fluctuations, on the contrary, do not show a clear topological selection of the energy transfer since the overall direction of the local cascade rate is found to be determined by the sign of $-\nabla\cdot u$ (plasma volumetric compression or expansion).

physics.space-ph↗

arXiv2025

Evolution of ion distribution functions in ionospheric plasmas perturbed by Alfvén waves

This study investigates ion kinetic effects during the parametric decay instability (PDI) of parallel-propagating Alfvén waves under plasma conditions characteristic of the Earth's ionosphere. By using a series of hybrid particle-in-cell simulations, we examine the evolution of ion velocity distribution functions (VDFs) in ultra-low-beta plasmas. Our numerical campaign systematically explores the dependence on key parameters (plasma beta, pump-wave amplitude and polarization, and ion composition). To emphasize the role of kinetic effects, we choose to trigger the PDI with a dispersive mother wave with wavelength comparable to the ion characteristic inertial length. Our results reveal pronounced nonthermal VDF modifications, including parallel heating and the formation of secondary ion beams, linked to the nonlinear evolution of parametric decay instability. By varying the plasma beta and the pump-wave amplitude, we identify a critical regime where rapid and complete broadening of the velocity distribution function is observed, triggering bidirectional ion acceleration. Notably, simulations modeling realistic ionospheric conditions demonstrate that even low-amplitude Alfvénic perturbations can induce significant VDF spreading and ion beam generation, with hydrogen ions exhibiting stronger effects than oxygen. These nonthermal microscopic processes offer a plausible mechanism for particle precipitation in space weather events. This work represents the first comprehensive study with hybrid simulations of PDI-driven ion kinetics in ultra-low-beta plasmas, providing quantitative estimates for the time delay between electromagnetic wave impact and ion VDF modification and new insights into wave-particle interactions that may contribute to ion acceleration, precipitation processes and space plasma dynamics.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2025

The effects of expansion and turbulence on the interplanetary evolution of a magnetic cloud

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) represent the most extreme solar products, showing complex and dynamic structures when detected in situ. They are often preceded by a shock and carry a magnetic cloud organised as a flux rope, surrounded and permeated by turbulent fluctuations, and whose radial size expands during propagation. We investigate the internal dynamics of the 2D section of a cylindrical flux rope propagating at constant velocity in the spherically expanding solar wind, employing the expanding box model, which allows for high spatial resolution. Our setting is simplified, with uniform and non-magnetised solar wind, to which we superpose turbulent fluctuations. We find that the spherically expanding geometry alone perturbs the flux rope equilibrium, producing a radial head-tail velocity profile and a radial size increase. The ratio between the expansion and Alfvén timescales, associated respectively to propagation and internal crossing time, controls the resistance to transverse stretching and the increase of the flux rope radial extent; the plasma beta controls the overall size of the structure. Turbulent fluctuations mainly affect the flux rope transverse structure, spreading its axial field at distances comparable to its size; on the contrary, dynamics along the radial direction remains coherent and the increase in radial size is still consistently observed. We validate our results by comparison with statistical observations and dimensionless estimates, such as the expansion parameter and the radial size scaling exponent, suggesting that the ratio between internal and propagation timescales might help in better classifying different kinds of radial expansions for flux ropes.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2024

Temperature inversion in a confined plasma atmosphere: coarse-grained effect of temperature fluctuations at its base

Prompted by the relevant problem of temperature inversion (i.e. gradient of density anti-correlated to the gradient of temperature) in astrophysics, we introduce a novel method to model a gravitationally confined multi-component collisionless plasma in contact with a fluctuating thermal boundary. We focus on systems with anti-correlated (inverted) density and temperature profiles, with applications to solar physics. The dynamics of the plasma is analytically described via the coupling of an appropriated coarse-grained distribution function and temporally coarse-grained Vlasov dynamics. We derive a stationary solution of the system and predict the inverted density and temperature profiles of the two-species for scenarios relevant for the corona. We validate our method by comparing the analytical results with kinetic numerical simulations of the plasma dynamics in the context of the two-species Hamiltonian mean-field model (HMF). Finally, we apply our theoretical framework to the problem of the temperature inversion in the solar corona obtaining density and temperature profiles in remarkably good agreement with the observations.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2024

A GPU-Accelerated Modern Fortran Version of the ECHO Code for Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

The numerical study of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) plays a crucial role in high-energy astrophysics, but unfortunately is computationally demanding, given the complex physics involved (high Lorentz factor flows, extreme magnetization, curved spacetimes near compact objects) and the large variety of spatial scales needed to resolve turbulent motions. A great benefit comes from the porting of existing codes running on standard processors to GPU-based platforms. However, this usually requires a drastic rewriting of the original code, the use of specific languages like CUDA, and a complex analysis of data management and optimization of parallel processes. Here we describe the porting of the ECHO code for special and general relativistic MHD to accelerated devices, simply based on native Fortran language built-in constructs, especially 'do concurrent' loops, few OpenACC directives, and the straightforward data management provided by the Unified Memory option of NVIDIA compilers.Thanks to these very minor modifications to the original code, the new version of ECHO runs at least 16 times faster on GPU platforms compared to CPU-based ones. The chosen benchmark is the 3D propagation of a relativistic MHD Alfvén wave, for which strong and weak scaling tests performed on the LEONARDO pre-exascale supercomputer at CINECA are provided (using up to 256 nodes corresponding to 1024 GPUs, and over 14 billion cells). Finally, an example of high-resolution relativistic MHD Alfvénic turbulence simulation is shown, demonstrating the potential for astrophysical plasmas of the new GPU-based version of ECHO.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Gamma-Ray Burst observations by the high-energy charged particle detector on board the CSES-01 satellite between 2019 and 2021

In this paper we report the detection of five strong Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) by the High-Energy Particle Detector (HEPD-01) mounted on board the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES-01), operational since 2018 on a Sun-synchronous polar orbit at a $\sim$ 507 km altitude and 97$^\circ$ inclination. HEPD-01 was designed to detect high-energy electrons in the energy range 3 - 100 MeV, protons in the range 30 - 300 MeV, and light nuclei in the range 30 - 300 MeV/n. Nonetheless, Monte Carlo simulations have shown HEPD-01 is sensitive to gamma-ray photons in the energy range 300 keV - 50 MeV, even if with a moderate effective area above $\sim$ 5 MeV. A dedicated time correlation analysis between GRBs reported in literature and signals from a set of HEPD-01 trigger configuration masks has confirmed the anticipated detector sensitivity to high-energy photons. A comparison between the simultaneous time profiles of HEPD-01 electron fluxes and photons from GRB190114C, GRB190305A, GRB190928A, GRB200826B and GRB211211A has shown a remarkable similarity, in spite of the different energy ranges. The high-energy response, with peak sensitivity at about 2 MeV, and moderate effective area of the detector in the actual flight configuration explain why these five GRBs, characterised by a fluence above $\sim$ 3 $\times$ 10$^{-5}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ in the energy interval 300 keV - 50 MeV, have been detected.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Linking Langevin equation to scaling properties of space plasma turbulence at sub-ion scales

Current understanding of the kinetic-scale turbulence in weakly-collisional plasmas still remains elusive. We employ a general framework in which the turbulent energy transfer is envisioned as a scale-to-scale Langevin process. Fluctuations in the sub-ion range show a global scale invariance, thus suggesting a homogeneous energy repartition. In this Letter, we interpret such a feature by linking the drift term of the Langevin equation to scaling properties of fluctuations. Theoretical expectations are verified on solar wind observations and numerical simulations thus giving relevance to the proposed framework for understanding kinetic-scale turbulence in space plasmas.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2022

Anisotropic electron heating in turbulence-driven magnetic reconnection in the near-Sun solar wind

We perform a high-resolution two-dimensional fully-kinetic numerical simulation of a turbulent plasma system with observation-driven conditions, in order to investigate the interplay between turbulence, magnetic reconnection, and particle heating from ion to sub-electron scales in the near-Sun solar wind. We find that the power spectra of the turbulent plasma and electromagnetic fluctuations show multiple power-law intervals down to scales smaller than the electron gyroradius. Magnetic reconnection is observed to occur in correspondence of current sheets with a thickness of the order of the electron inertial length, which form and shrink due to interacting ion-scale vortexes. In some cases, both ion and electron outflows are observed (the classic reconnection scenario), while in others -- typically for the shortest current sheets -- only electron jets are presents ("electron-only reconnection"). At the onset of reconnection, the electron temperature starts to increase and a strong parallel temperature anisotropy develops. This suggests that in strong turbulence electron-scale coherent structures may play a significant role for electron heating, as impulsive and localized phenomena such as magnetic reconnection may transfer energy from the electromagnetic fields to particles more efficiently than damping mechanisms related to interactions with wave-like fluctuations.

physics.space-ph↗

arXiv2022

Ion-scale transition of plasma turbulence: Pressure-strain effect

We investigate properties of solar wind-like plasma turbulence using direct numerical simulations. We analyze the transition from large, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) scales to the ion characteristic ones using two-dimensional hybrid (fluid electrons, kinetic ions) simulations. To capture and quantify turbulence properties, we apply the Karman-Howarth-Monin (KHM) equation for compressible Hall MHD (extended by considering the plasma pressure as a tensor quantity) to the numerical results. The KHM analysis indicates that the transition from MHD to ion scales (the so called ion break in the power spectrum) results from a combination of an onset of Hall physics and of an effective dissipation owing to the pressure-strain energy-exchange channel and resistivity. We discuss the simulation results in the context of the solar wind.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2021

Spacetime Hall-MHD turbulence at sub-ion scales: structures or waves?

Spatiotemporal properties of two-dimensional (2D) Hall-magnetohydrodynamic turbulence at intermediate plasma $β=2$ are studied by means of Fast Iterative Filtering, a new technique for the decomposition of nonstationary nonlinear signals. Results show that the magnetic energy at sub-ion scales is concentrated in perturbations with frequencies smaller than the ion-cyclotron (IC) frequency and with polarization properties that are incompatible with both kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) and IC waves. At higher frequencies, we clearly identify signatures of both whistler waves and KAWs, however their energetic contribution to the magnetic power spectrum is negligible. We conclude that the dynamics of 2D Hall-MHD turbulence at sub-ion scales is mainly driven by localized intermittent structures, with no significant contribution of wavelike fluctuations.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2021

Spectral transfer and Kármán-Howarth-Monin equations for compressible Hall magnetohydrodynamics

We derive two new forms of the Kármán-Howarth-Monin equation for decaying compressible Hall magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We test them on results of a weakly-compressible, two-dimensional, moderate-Reynolds-number Hall MHD simulation and compare them with an isotropic spectral transfer (ST) equation. The KHM and ST equations are automatically satisfied during the whole simulation owing to the periodic boundary conditions and have complementary cumulative behavior. They are used here to analyze the onset of turbulence and its properties when it is fully developed. These approaches give equivalent results characterizing: the decay of the kinetic + magnetic energy at large scales, the MHD and Hall cross-scale energy transfer/cascade, the pressure dilatation, and the dissipation. The Hall cascade appears when the MHD one brings the energy close to the ion inertial range and is related to the formation of reconnecting current sheets. At later times, the pressure-dilation energy-exchange rate oscillates around zero with no net effect on the cross-scale energy transfer when averaged over a period of its oscillations. A reduced one-dimensional analysis suggests that all three methods may be useful to estimate the energy cascade rate from in situ observations.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Evidence of a "current-mediated" turbulent regime in space and astrophysical plasmas

How the turbulent energy cascade develops below the magnetohydrodynamic scales in space and astrophysical plasmas is a major open question. Here, we measure the power spectrum of magnetic fluctuations in Parker Solar Probe's observations close to the Sun and in state-of-the-art numerical simulations of plasma turbulence. Both reveal a power-law behavior with a slope compatible with $-11/3$ at scales smaller than the ion characteristic scales, steeper than what is typically observed in the solar wind and in the Earth's magnetosheath. We explain such behavior by developing a simple two-fluid model which does not require any kinetic processes nor electron-inertia effects. This is characterized by a significant contribution of the ion kinetic energy to the total turbulent energy cascade at sub-ion scales, although the dynamics is driven by the magnetic field through the current density. We expect that this regime may be relevant for a broad class of low-beta plasmas, e.g. the solar corona, non-relativistic magnetized jets and disks, and laboratory plasmas.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Multidimensional Iterative Filtering: a new approach for investigating plasma turbulence in numerical simulations

Turbulent space and astrophysical plasmas exhibit a complex dynamics, which involves nonlinear coupling across different temporal and spatial scales. There is growing evidence that impulsive events, such as magnetic reconnection instabilities, lead to a spatially localized enhancement of energy dissipation, thus speeding up the energy transfer at small scales. Capturing such a diverse dynamics is challenging. Here, we employ the Multidimensional Iterative Filtering (MIF) method, a novel technique for the analysis of nonstationary multidimensional signals. Unlike other traditional methods (e.g., based on Fourier or wavelet decomposition), MIF does not require any previous assumption on the functional form of the signal to be identified. Using MIF, we carry out a multiscale analysis of Hall-magnetohydrodynamic (HMHD) and hybrid particle-in-cell (HPIC) numerical simulations of decaying plasma turbulence. The results assess the ability of MIF to spatially identify and separate the different scales (the MHD inertial range, the sub-ion kinetic, and the dissipation scales) of the plasma dynamics. Furthermore, MIF decomposition allows to detect localized current structures and to characterize their contribution to the statistical and spectral properties of turbulence. Overall, MIF arises as a very promising technique for the study of turbulent plasma environments.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

On cascade of kinetic energy in compressible hydrodynamic turbulence

Properties of the turbulent cascade of kinetic energy are studied using direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional hydrodynamic decaying turbulence with a moderate Reynolds number and the initial Mach number $M=1$. Compressible and incompressible versions of the Karman-Howarth-Monin (KHM) and low-pass filtering/coarse-graining approaches are compared. In the simulation the total energy is well conserved; the scale dependent KHM and coarse-grained energy equations are also well conserved; the two approaches show similar results, the system does not have an inertial range for the cascade of kinetic energy, the region where this cascade dominates also have a non-negligible contribution of the kinetic-energy decay, dissipation, and pressure-dilatation effects. While the two approaches give semi-quantitatively similar results for the kinetic energy cascade, dissipation and pressure-dilatation rates, they differ in the increment separation and filtering scales; these scales are not simply related. The two approaches may be used to find the inertial range and to determine the cascade/dissipation rate of the kinetic energy.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Asteroseismic Signature of a Large Active Region

Axisymmetric magnetic activity on the Sun and Sun-like stars increases the frequencies of the modes of acoustic oscillation. However, it is unclear how a corotating patch of activity affects the oscillations, since such a perturbation is unsteady in the frame of the observer. In this paper we qualitatively describe the asteroseismic signature of a large active region in the power spectrum of the dipole and quadrupole p modes. In the corotating frame of the active region, the perturbations due to (differential) rotation and the active region completely lift the $(2\ell + 1)$-fold azimuthal degeneracy of the frequency spectrum of modes with harmonic degree $\ell$. In the frame of the observer, the unsteady nature of the perturbation leads to the appearance of $(2\ell+1)^2$ peaks in the power spectrum of a multiplet. These peaks blend into each other to form asymmetric line profiles. In the limit of a small active region, we approximate the power spectrum of a multiplet in terms of $2\times(2\ell+1)$ peaks, whose amplitudes and frequencies depend on the latitude of the active region and the inclination angle of the star's rotation axis. In order to check the results and to explore the nonlinear regime, we also perform numerical simulations using the 3D time-domain pseudo-spectral linear pulsation code GLASS.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

Modeling Kelvin-Helmholtz instability-driven turbulence with hybrid simulations of Alfvénic turbulence

Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations of plasma turbulence generated by a Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) event at the Earth's magnetopause are compared with a high-resolution two-dimensional (2D) hybrid direct numerical simulation (DNS) of decaying plasma turbulence driven by large-scale balanced Alfvénic fluctuations. The simulation, set up with four observation-driven physical parameters (ion and electron betas, turbulence strength, and injection scale) exhibits a quantitative agreement on the spectral, intermittency, and cascade-rate properties with in situ observations, despite the different driving mechanisms. Such agreement demonstrates a certain universality of the turbulent cascade from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) to sub-ion scales, whose properties are mainly determined by the selected parameters, also indicating that the KH instability-driven turbulence has a quasi-2D nature. The validity of the Taylor hypothesis in the sub-ion spatial range suggests that the fluctuations at sub-ion scales have predominantly low frequencies, consistent with a kinetic Alfvén wave-like nature or with quasi-static structures. Finally, the third-order structure function analysis indicates that the cascade rate of the turbulence generated by a KH event in the magnetopause is an order of magnitude larger than in the ambient magnetosheath.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2019

Fast Magnetic Reconnection: Secondary Tearing Instability and Role of the Hall Term

Magnetic reconnection provides the primary source for explosive energy release, plasma heating and particle acceleration in many astrophysical environments. The last years witnessed a revival of interest in the MHD tearing instability as a driver for efficient reconnection. It has been established that, provided the current sheet aspect ratio becomes small enough ($a/L \sim S^{-1/3}$ for a given Lundquist number $S\gg 1$), reconnection occurs on ideal Alfvén timescales and becomes independent on $S$. Here we investigate, by means of two-dimensional simulations, the \emph{ideal} tearing instability in the Hall-MHD regime, which is appropriate when the width of the resistive layer $δ$ becomes comparable to the ion inertial length $d_i$. Moreover, we study in detail the spontaneous development and reconnection of secondary current sheets, which for high $S$ naturally adjust to the ideal aspect ratio and hence their evolution proceeds very rapidly. For moderate low $S$, the aspect ratio tends to the Sweet-Parker scaling ($a/L \sim S^{-1/2}$), in order to fulfill the condition $δ\ll a$ necessary for the onset of a tearing instability. When the Hall term is included, the reconnection rate of this secondary nonlinear phase is enhanced and, depending on the ratio $d_i/δ$, can be twice with respect to the pure MHD case, and up to ten times larger than the linear phase. Therefore, the evolution of the tearing instability in thin current sheets in the Hall-MHD regime naturally leads to an explosive disruption of the reconnecting site and to energy release on super-Alfvénic timescales, as required to explain astrophysical observations.

physics.plasm-ph↗