Open AccessCosmic ray scattering in compressible turbulence
Author(s) -
Lazarian A.,
Beresnyak A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.11093.x
Subject(s) - physics , magnetohydrodynamics , instability , scattering , magnetohydrodynamic turbulence , computational physics , turbulence , astrophysics , mean free path , energy cascade , interstellar medium , classical mechanics , magnetic field , mechanics , optics , galaxy , quantum mechanics
We study the scattering of low‐energy cosmic rays (CRs) in a turbulent, compressive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fluid. We show that compressible MHD modes – fast or slow waves with wavelengths smaller than CR mean free paths induce cyclotron instability in CRs. The instability feeds the new small‐scale Alfvénic wave component with wavevectors mostly along magnetic field, which is not a part of the MHD turbulence cascade. This new component gives feedback on the instability through decreasing the CR mean free path. We show that the ambient turbulence fully suppresses the instability at large scales, while wave steepening constrains the amplitude of the waves at small scales. We provide the energy spectrum of the plane‐parallel Alfvénic component and calculate mean free paths of CRs as a function of their energy. We find that for the typical parameters of turbulence in the interstellar medium and in the intercluster medium the new Alfvénic component provides the scattering of the low‐energy CRs that exceeds the direct resonance scattering by MHD modes. This solves the problem of insufficient scattering of low‐energy CRs in the turbulent interstellar or intracluster medium that was reported in the literature.