title: Structure of Plasma Heating in Gyrokinetic Alfvénic Turbulence.
abstract: We analyze plasma heating in weakly collisional kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence using high resolution gyrokinetic simulations spanning the range of scales between the ion and the electron gyroradii. Real space structures that have a higher than average heating rate are shown not to be confined to current sheets. This novel result is at odds with previous studies, which use the electromagnetic work in the local electron fluid frame, i.e., J·(E+v_{e}×B), as a proxy for turbulent dissipation to argue that heating follows the intermittent spatial structure of the electric current. Furthermore, we show that electrons are dominated by parallel heating while the ions prefer the perpendicular heating route. We comment on the implications of the results presented here.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
authors.forename: Alejandro Bañón
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Navarro
authors.affiliation: Applied Mathematics Research Centre, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Bogdan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Teaca
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Told
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.|Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Boltzmannstraße 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Groselj
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Crandall
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jenko