Bremen 2000 – scientific programme
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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 4: Magnetosph
ären und Plasmen
EP 4.7: Talk
Wednesday, March 22, 2000, 12:15–12:30, S3121
Magnetic mirror mode theory: A basic low-frequency mode of plasma turbulence — •Rudolf Treumann1,2, Norbert Sckopke1, and Wolfgang Baumjohann1 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching — 2International Space Science Institute Bern, Switzerland
We report on recent progress in the investigation of the magnetic mirror mode in collisionless plasma turbulence. It turns out that consideration of the condition for magnetic mirror mode plasma instability identifies this mode as a superconducting/superfluid phase transition in a high temperature magnetised plasma. The condition of instability is practically identical to the condition of onset of the Meissner effect for exclusion of the magnetic field from a certain superconducting region. The magnetic field has to be less than a certain critical value Bc(Tc⊥) that depends on the plasma temperature. In addition anisotropy is required. This fact permits for a Landau-Ginzburg treatment of mirror mode turbulence and identifies the instability as a phase transition which at criticality leads to coexistence of two phases, the normal and the bubble phase. In equilibrium one can treat this system as a turbulent state. There are two possibilities of states: ordinary transitions and dirty transitions. The latter is probably the more realistic one. Application to observations shows that one can deduce some insight into macro-plasma turbulence in this way.