Perpendicular ion heating in turbulence and reconnection: magnetic moment breaking by coherent fluctuations
Abstract
We study the interaction of an ion with a fluctuation in the electromagnetic fields that is localized in both space and time. We study the scale-dependence of the interaction in both space and time, deriving a generic form for the ion's energy change, which involves an exponential cutoff based on the characteristic timescale of the electromagnetic fluctuation. This leads to diffusion in energy in both v and v. We show how to apply our results to general plasma physics phenomena, and specifically to Alfv\'enic turbulence and to reconnection. Our theory can be viewed as a unification of previous models of stochastic ion heating, cyclotron heating, and reconnection heating in a single theoretical framework.
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