When collisions are strong in a magnetized plasma, standard closures provide simple representations of dissipation in terms of coefficients of viscosity and resistivity. In the opposite limit of weak collisions, the analogous physical effects that lead to dissipation are present, but the simple approximations to describe them, the closures, are not available in general. But how different are these relationships when collisions are absent? Here, we inquire as to whether the collisionless case admits statistical relationships analogous to the viscous and resistive closures found in collisional plasma. We employ kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of proton–electron plasma as well as in situ observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, to examine analogous viscous-like and resistive-like scaling in the weakly collisional regime. Rather surprisingly, we find that, on average, the collisionless cases do exhibit dissipation behavior very similar to the collisional plasmas. It is of theoretical significance that the relationships found are statistical and not deterministic as they are when collisional closures are enforced.
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Collisional-like dissipation in collisionless plasmas
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August 2023
Letter|
August 16 2023
Collisional-like dissipation in collisionless plasmas

Riddhi Bandyopadhyay
;
Riddhi Bandyopadhyay
a)
(Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing)
1
Department of Astrophysical Sciences
, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: riddhib@princeton.edu
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Yan Yang
;
Yan Yang
(Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing)
2
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware
, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA
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William H. Matthaeus
;
William H. Matthaeus
(Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing)
2
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware
, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA
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Tulasi N. Parashar
;
Tulasi N. Parashar
(Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing)
3
School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington
, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
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Vadim Roytershteyn
;
Vadim Roytershteyn
(Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing)
4
Space Science Institute
, Boulder, Colorado 80301, USA
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Alexandros Chasapis
;
Alexandros Chasapis
(Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing)
5
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder
, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
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D. J. Gershman
;
D. J. Gershman
(Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing)
6
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
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B. L. Giles
;
B. L. Giles
(Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing)
6
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
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J. L. Burch
J. L. Burch
(Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing)
7
Southwest Research Institute
, San Antonio, Texas 78238, USA
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a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: riddhib@princeton.edu
Phys. Plasmas 30, 080702 (2023)
Article history
Received:
February 17 2023
Accepted:
July 16 2023
Connected Content
A companion article has been published:
Plasmas in space prove similar despite disparate collision levels
Citation
Riddhi Bandyopadhyay, Yan Yang, William H. Matthaeus, Tulasi N. Parashar, Vadim Roytershteyn, Alexandros Chasapis, D. J. Gershman, B. L. Giles, J. L. Burch; Collisional-like dissipation in collisionless plasmas. Phys. Plasmas 1 August 2023; 30 (8): 080702. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0146986
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