Petr Hellinger

The relationship between a decaying plasma turbulence and proton fire hose instabilities in a slowly expanding plasma is investigated using three-dimensional hybrid expanding box simulations. We impose an initial ambient magnetic field perpendicular to the radial direction simulation box, and we start with an isotropic spectrum of large-scale, linearly-polarized, random-phase Alfvenic fluctuations with zero cross-helicity. A turbulent cascade rapidly develops and leads to a weak proton heating that is not sufficient to overcome the expansion-driven perpendicular cooling. The plasma system eventually drives the parallel and oblique fire hose instabilities that generate quasi-monochromatic wave packets that reduce the proton temperature anisotropy. The fire hose wave activity has a low amplitude with wave vectors quasi-parallel/oblique with respect to the ambient magnetic field outside of the region dominated by the turbulent cascade and is discernible in one-dimensional power spectra taken only in the direction quasi-parallel/oblique with respect to the ambient magnetic field; at quasi-perpendicular angles the wave activity is hidden by the turbulent background. The fire hose wave activity reduces intermittency and the Shannon entropy but increases the Jensen-Shannon complexity of magnetic fluctuations.