Energy dissipation by kinetic Alfven waves in sheared magnetic fields

Phase mixing of plasma waves leads to the evolution of increasingly smaller-scale perturbations, eventually leading to viscous or resistive dissipation of energy (Chen 2021). This has been suggested as a potential cause of solar coronal heating, though the details of the exact mechanisms involved are still unclear. We examine the effect of sheared magnetic fields on the phase mixing of Alfven waves, which increases their wavenumber transverse to the magnetic field, and so transforms them into kinetic Alfven waves that play a large role in electron heating. An ideal MHD model displays singularities at resonant Alfven points; thus, to investigate these phenomena, we incorporate finite ion Larmor radius effects into our gyro-RMHD model, allowing us to resolve the behavior of the plasma at those resonant layers.