A multiscale study of turbulent heating in hot accretion flows

Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope (ETH) collaboration revealed the stunning picture of radiation from the vicinity of the black hole. For accurate interpretation of the observation, it is crucial to understand the nature of plasma in the accretion disk. The disks that EHT is observing are called radiatively inefficient accretion flows, in which the plasma is hot and dilute, and consequently collisionless. In collisionless plasma, ions and electrons can have different temperatures as they do not thermally relax through Coulomb interaction. The ion-to-electron temperature ratio is the key to interpreting the observation because we can measure only the electrons' energy via radiation. To study ion and electron heating, kinetic treatment, rather than hydrodynamic treatment, is necessary. However, kinetic plasma turbulence is an extremely challenging subject. Therefore, we utilized gyrokinetics that is widely used in magnetic confinement fusion research. Our new multiscale approach treats a "large scale" where turbulence is driven by magnetorotational instability via MHD, and a "small scale" where turbulence is dissipated via gyrokinetics. Using this approach, we formulated a prescription of ion-to-electron heating ratio. In my talk, I will also present basic knowledge that is necessary to study collisionless turbulent heating.