Instabilities and turbulent processes in low-temperature magnetized plasmas

Low-temperature magnetized plasmas play an important role in natural phenomena and engineering applications, such as material processing and spacecraft electric propulsion. One of the key physical processes that are not well understood in low-temperature magnetized plasmas is the electron transport across magnetic fields. It has been observed from past investigations that cross-field electron transport is enhanced compared to classical theory considering collisional transport, cf. drift-diffusion approximation. Recent experimental, theoretical, and computational studies further suggest that multidimensional plasma waves can be excited due to a variety of plasma instabilities, which may lead to collisionless enhancement of the cross-field electron transport. The nonlinear saturation of such instabilities, both kinetic and fluid, can be influenced by the interactions with various other mechanisms, including plasma-wall interactions, collisional transport, plasma inhomogeneity, circuit effects, and facility effects. In this talk, we will review the various plasma instabilities that lead to plasma turbulence within low-temperature magnetized plasmas and discuss the potential mechanisms of electron transport and diffusion across the magnetic field without any collisions. The results obtained from our multidimensional kinetic models show that the cross-field electron transport is affected by the amplitude and wavelength of the plasma waves. Singly particle trajectory simulations suggest that the magnetized electrons may be stochastically heated due to the presence of the multidimensional plasma oscillations. The understanding of such turbulent transport also plays an important role in developing reduced-order fluid models to capture some dynamical and finite non-Maxwellian effects.