Biological Sciences Division
Published March 9, 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Strong suppression of heat conduction in a laboratory replica of galaxy-cluster turbulent plasmas

Creators

  • 1. University of Oxford
  • 2. University of Chicago
  • 3. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • 4. Stanford University
  • 5. University of Strathclyde
  • 6. CEA
  • 7. AWE
  • 8. University of Rochester
  • 9. Universitè Paris VI Ecole Polytechnique
  • 10. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Description

In conventional gases and plasmas, it is known that heat fluxes are proportional to temperature gradients, with collisions between particles mediating energy flow from hotter to colder regions and the coefficient of thermal conduction given by Spitzer's theory. However, this theory breaks down in magnetized, turbulent, weakly collisional plasmas, although modifications are difficult to predict from first principles due to the complex, multiscale nature of the problem. Understanding heat transport is important in astrophysical plasmas such as those in galaxy clusters, where observed temperature profiles are explicable only in the presence of a strong suppression of heat conduction compared to Spitzer's theory. To address this problem, we have created a replica of such a system in a laser laboratory experiment. Our data show a reduction of heat transport by two orders of magnitude or more, leading to large temperature variations on small spatial scales (as is seen in cluster plasmas).

Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. All the data shown in the paper’s figures have been deposited in Oxford University Research Archive (ORA)–data (https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fb17fe8d-fd07-444e-aa7e-e8b021fa463e). All other data are available in the main text or the Supplementary Materials. The FLASH code is publicly available at https://flash.rochester.edu.

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sciadv.abj6799.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abj6799
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:11005

Funding

National Science Foundation
PHY-1619573
National Science Foundation
PHY-203392
U.S. Department of Energy
B591485
U.S. Department of Energy
57789
U.S. Department of Energy
DE-SC0016566
U.S. Department of Energy
DE-NA0003868
U.S. Department of Energy
DE-NA0001808
U.S. Department of Energy
89233118CNA000010
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
U.S. Department of Energy
89233119CNA000063
U.S. Department of Energy
DE-NA0003856
Los Alamos National Laboratory
536203
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
EP/M022331/1
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
EP/N014472/1
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
EP/R034737/1
Los Alamos National Laboratory
630138
National Research Foundation
016R1A5A1013277

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Physical Sciences Division
Department(s)
Astronomy and Astrophysics