Gyrofluid vortex interaction

Abstract

Low-frequency turbulence in magnetised plasmas is intrisically influenced by gyroscale effects across ion Larmor orbits. Here we show that fundamental vortex interactions like merging and co-advection in gyrofluid plasmas are essentially modified under the influence of gyroinduced vortex spiraling. For identical initial vorticity, the fate of co-rotating eddies is decided between accelerated merging or explosion by the asymmetry of initial density distributions. Structures in warm gyrofluid turbulence are characterised by gyrospinning enhanced filamentation into thin vorticity sheets.