Regimes of cosmic-ray diffusion in Galactic turbulence

Cosmic-ray transport in astrophysical environments is often dominated by the diffusion of particles in a magnetic field composed of both a turbulent and a mean component. This process, which is two-fold turbulent mixing in that the particle motion is stochastic with respect to the field lines, needs to be understood in order to properly model cosmic-ray signatures. One of the most important aspects in the modeling of cosmic-ray diffusion is that fully resonant scattering, the most effective such process, is only possible if the wave spectrum covers the entire range of propagation angles. By taking the wave spectrum boundaries into account, we quantify cosmic-ray diffusion parallel and perpendicular to the guide field direction at turbulence levels above 5% of the total magnetic field. We apply our results of the parallel and perpendicular diffusion coefficient to the Milky Way. We show that simple purely diffusive transport is in conflict with observations of the inner Galaxy, but that just by taking a Galactic wind into account, data can be matched in the central 5 kpc zone. Further comparison shows that the outer Galaxy at $$>5$$ > 5 kpc, on the other hand, should be dominated by perpendicular diffusion, likely changing to parallel diffusion at the outermost radii of the Milky Way.

Diffusion of Cosmic Rays in MHD Turbulence with Magnetic Mirrors

As the fundamental physical process with many astrophysical implications, the diffusion of cosmic rays (CRs) is determined by their interaction with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We consider the magnetic mirroring effect arising from MHD turbulence on the diffusion of CRs. Due to the intrinsic superdiffusion of turbulent magnetic fields, CRs with large pitch angles that undergo mirror reflection, i.e., bouncing CRs, are not trapped between magnetic mirrors, but move diffusively along the turbulent magnetic field, leading to a new type of parallel diffusion, i.e., mirror diffusion. This mirror diffusion is in general slower than the diffusion of nonbouncing CRs with small pitch angles that undergo gyroresonant scattering. The critical pitch angle at the balance between magnetic mirroring and pitch-angle scattering is important for determining the diffusion coefficients of both bouncing and nonbouncing CRs and their scalings with the CR energy. We find nonuniversal energy scalings of diffusion coefficients, depending on the properties of MHD turbulence.

Research on Interfacial Diffusion Reliability Model of Thin Film Thermocouple

Thin film thermocouple (TFTC) is widely used in high temperature measurement, which is of short response time, less heat residual and integrated structure. Due to the ultra-thin structure of TFTC, the interfacial diffusion has a great influence on its reliability when exposed to high temperature environment, which leads to its performance degradation. Taking thermocouple on the turbine blade as research object, the parallel diffusion model of multilayer thermocouple is proposed based on Fick’s law. The reliability model of the protective layer, the sensitive layer and the insulating layer are established in the basis of the parallel diffusion model. According to the logical correlation among the multilayer films of TFTC, the TTF model of TFTC is given. Finally, an example of reliability model based on multilayer diffusion is simulated by Monte Carlo method, which demonstrates the feasibility of the method and model.

Study on the Diffusion Rate of the Charge Carrier Transport in Regio-Random and Regio-Regular P3HT

Muon spin relaxation experiment has been conducted to probe the hopping mechanism in the poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) for both types of regio-random (Rdm) and regio-regular (RR). In this study we have performed calculations over the collected data to obtain the parallel and perpendicular diffusion rates, at temperatures of 10 K and 300 K. The calculation is based on the fitting method to the empirical function that relates the relaxation rate with the diffusion rates. For Rdm-P3HT, we have obtained the parallel diffusion rate to be 5.43 x 1013 rad/s at 300 K and 4.90 x 1014 rad/s at 10 K. While the perpendicular diffusion rates are 5.29 x 108 rad/s at 300 K and 1.88 x 106 rad/s at 10 K. For RR-P3HT, we have obtained the parallel diffusion rate to be 1.04 x 1014 rad/s at 300 K and 1.28 x 1015 rad/s at 10 K. While the perpendicular diffusion rates are 6.10 x 108 rad/s at 300 K and 5.35 x 105 at 10 K. The diffusion rates of RR-P3HT are higher than that of Rdm-P3HT, especially in the parallel direction. In both types of material, the parallel diffusion rate decreased with temperature, while the perpendicular diffusion rate increased with temperature, showing a change of behavior from 1D to 3D direction of charge transport.

Parallel velocity mixing yielding enhanced electron heating during magnetic pumping

Magnetic wave perturbations are observed in the solar wind and in the vicinity of Earth's bow shock. For such environments, recent work on magnetic pumping with electrons trapped in the magnetic perturbations has demonstrated the possibility of efficient energization of superthermal electrons. Here we also analyse the energization of such energetic electrons for which the transit time through the system is short compared with time scales associated with the magnetic field evolution. In particular, considering an idealized magnetic configuration we show how trapping/detrapping of energetic magnetized electrons can cause effective parallel velocity ( $v_{\parallel }$ -) diffusion. This parallel diffusion, combined with naturally occurring mechanisms known to cause pitch angle scattering, such as whistler waves, produces enhanced heating rates for magnetic pumping. We find that at low pitch angle scattering rates, the combined mechanism enhances the heating beyond the predictions of the recent theory for magnetic pumping with trapped electrons.

Turbulence-level dependence of cosmic ray parallel diffusion

ABSTRACT Understanding the transport of energetic cosmic rays belongs to the most challenging topics in astrophysics. Diffusion due to scattering by electromagnetic fluctuations is a key process in cosmic ray transport. The transition from a ballistic to a diffusive-propagation regime is presented in direct numerical calculations of diffusion coefficients for homogeneous magnetic field lines subject to turbulent perturbations. Simulation results are compared with theoretical derivations of the parallel diffusion coefficient’s dependences on the energy and the fluctuation amplitudes in the limit of weak turbulence. The present study shows that the widely used extrapolation of the energy scaling for the parallel diffusion coefficient to high turbulence levels predicted by quasi-linear theory does not provide a universally accurate description in the resonant-scattering regime. It is highlighted here that the numerically calculated diffusion coefficients can be polluted for low energies due to missing resonant interaction possibilities of the particles with the turbulence. Five reduced-rigidity regimes are established, which are separated by analytical boundaries derived in this work. Consequently, a proper description of cosmic ray propagation can only be achieved by using a turbulence-level-dependent diffusion coefficient and can contribute to solving the Galactic cosmic ray gradient problem.

Simple quality control technique to identify dissolved oxygen diffusion issues with biochemical oxygen demand bottle incubations

Stratified estuaries are home to expanding aquaculture activities whose ecological footprints can be observed through trends in microbial community respiration in the water column. Bottle incubations are widely used to measure water column community respiration in marine and freshwater ecosystems by measuring the flux of dissolved oxygen occurring in the bottle over a period of time. When in situ dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations are markedly different than DO concentration of the incubation medium the potential for diffusion of oxygen across the bottle opening is great and may be especially pronounced in strongly stratified systems with relatively low rates of pelagic oxygen consumption. We incubated 60 Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) bottles filled with sterilized water with DO concentrations ranging from 2.51 mg O2 L-1 to 10.03 mg O2 L-1 for 24 hours in a temperature controlled water bath. There was a significant relationship when DO flux was set as a function of initial DO (DO Flux = -0.0017x + 0.0085, r2 = 0.72, p < 2.2 e-16). DO fluxes ranged from -0.012 mg O2 L-1 hour-1 to 0.005 mg O2 L-1 hour-1 for bottles incubated with initial DO ranging from 10.03 mg O2 L-1 to 3.31 mg O2 L-1, respectively. These results suggest that diffusion across the ground glass seal of BOD bottles is possible and that extra precaution through parallel diffusion controls should be considered when measuring pelagic respiration using BOD bottle incubations in systems with relatively low or relatively high in situ DO concentrations.