I found a lot of plasma physics works that talks about non-local transport, what is non-local transport in plasmas? What does non-local transport mean ? Some examples please.
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1$\begingroup$ an article here link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41614-022-00064-6 $\endgroup$– anna vCommented Oct 13, 2023 at 4:32
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$\begingroup$ Thank you @annav $\endgroup$– GallagherCommented Oct 13, 2023 at 15:15
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Non-local transport just means the shape of the velocity distribution function (VDF) observed in situ did not come about locally, i.e., it happen somewhere else and then propagated to the detector. Imagine you start with a Maxwellian VDF (e.g., see What is the correct relativistic distribution function? for examples) in a plasma and some process(es) add a power-law tail to one side. That VDF then propagates some distance without much change in shape and you measure it at a remote location (with respect to where the changes occurred). That would be an example of non-local transport. A topic that is of keen interest currently is referred to as "transport versus acceleration" regarding things like solar energetic particles (SEPs).
What that means is that we are trying to figure out if the features in the observed VDFs came about because of local (i.e., near the detection point) energization processes or if the features arose far away and stayed in the VDF as it propagated to the detector. The solution to this requires multi-point observations so one can attempt to observe the evolution of the VDF as it propagates through space.
answered Oct 13, 2023 at 12:42