@article{4039,
  author = {Vladimir Zhdankin and Dmitri Uzdensky and Gregory Werner and Mitchell Begelman},
  title = {Numerical investigation of kinetic turbulence in relativistic pair plasmas - I. Turbulence statistics},
  abstract = {<p>We describe results from particle-in-cell simulations of driven turbulence in collisionless, magnetized, relativistic pair plasma. This physical regime provides a simple setting for investigating the basic properties of kinetic turbulence and is relevant for high-energy astrophysical systems such as pulsar wind nebulae and astrophysical jets. In this paper, we investigate the statistics of turbulent fluctuations in simulations on lattices of up to 1024<sup>3</sup>\&nbsp;cells and containing up to 2\&nbsp;\texttimes\&nbsp;10<sup>11</sup>\&nbsp;particles. Due to the absence of a cooling mechanism in our simulations, turbulent energy dissipation reduces the magnetization parameter to order unity within a few dynamical times, causing turbulent motions to become sub-relativistic. In the developed stage, our results agree with predictions from magnetohydrodynamic turbulence phenomenology at inertial-range scales, including a power-law magnetic energy spectrum with index near -5/3, scale-dependent anisotropy of fluctuations described by critical balance, lognormal distributions for particle density and internal energy density (related by a 4/3 adiabatic index, as predicted for an ultra-relativistic ideal gas), and the presence of intermittency. We also present possible signatures of a kinetic cascade by measuring power-law spectra for the magnetic, electric and density fluctuations at sub-Larmor scales.</p>},
  year = {2017},
  journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  volume = {474},
  chapter = {2514},
  pages = {2514-2535},
  month = {2017-11},
  issn = {0035-8711},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/474/2/2514/4600561},
  doi = {10.1093/mnras/stx2883},
}