Energy conversion in turbulent weakly-collisional plasmas: Eulerian Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell simulations

Kinetic simulations based on the Eulerian Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell (HVM) formalism permit the examination of plasma turbulence with useful resolution of the proton velocity distribution function (VDF). The HVM model is employed here to study the balance of energy, focusing on channels of conversion that lead to proton kinetic effects, including growth of internal energy and temperature anisotropies. The results support conclusions based on recent work with Particle-in-Cell codes (Yang et al., POP, 2017), while we are also able to provide an accurate energy balance for protons, and to analyze correlations of temperature anisotropies with the pressure-strain interaction. These numerical capabilities based on the Eulerian approach will enable deeper study of transfer and conversion channels in weakly collisional Vlasov plasmas (Pezzi et al., subm. to APJ, arXiv:1903.03398, 2019).