Open AccessNumerical investigation of the cosmic‐ray scattering anisotropy and Bohm diffusion in space plasmas
Author(s) -
Dosch A.,
Shalchi A.,
Tautz R. C.
Publication year - 2011
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.1365-2966.2011.18368.x
Subject(s) - physics , scattering , mean free path , isotropy , anisotropy , computational physics , magnetic field , diffusion , cosmic ray , astrophysical plasma , classical mechanics , condensed matter physics , astrophysics , optics , quantum mechanics
We employ a recently developed test‐particle simulation code to explore the Bohm diffusion and the scattering anisotropy of charged particles interacting with magnetic turbulence. By computing parallel and perpendicular mean free paths, it is shown that a dominant mean magnetic field and a large particle mean free path along the mean magnetic field break the scattering symmetry. In such cases, a strong scattering anisotropy is found, which is in good agreement with recent analytical calculations. It is also shown that the assumption of the Bohm diffusion in isotropic turbulence is only valid for some special cases.