A Comparison with Theory of Computation and Estimation of Pitch-Angle Diffusion Coefficients from Simulations in Noisy Reduced Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence

Abstract

The transport of energetic charged particles in turbulent magnetic fields is a topic of interest in various astrophysical and laboratory plasma contexts. In order to estimate the mean free path λ∥ of a particle in the direction parallel to the mean magnetic field, one can use theoretical expressions that include the pitch-angle diffusion coefficient Dμμ. In this work we evaluate theories for Dμμ in the context of the noisy reduced magnetohydrodynamic (NRMHD) model where turbulent fluctuations are absent at large parallel wavenumbers. For most turbulence models, the standard quasilinear theory predicts zero pitch-angle diffusion only for particles with a 90◦ pitch angle, but for NRMHD a range of pitch angles is affected, leading to infinite λ∥. We examine two theories that include resonance broadening which yield finite λ∥ and compare them with test-particle computer simulations in which the parallel mean free path can be readily obtained. We find that both theories are quite accurate in some regions of the parameter space considered, but neither is particularly good when the particle Larmor radius RL becomes much smaller than the quasilinear resonance limit.