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Nonthermal particle acceleration from maximum entropy in collisionless plasmas

Dissipative processes cause collisionless plasmas in many systems to develop nonthermal particle distributions with broad power-law tails. The prevalence of power-law energy distributions in space/astrophysical observations and kinetic simulations of systems with a variety of acceleration and trapping (or escape) mechanisms poses a deep mystery. We consider the possibility that such distributions can be modeled from maximum-entropy principles, when accounting for generalizations beyond the Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy. Using a dimensional representation of entropy (related to the Renyi and Tsallis entropies), we derive generalized maximum-entropy distributions with a power-law tail determined by the characteristic energy scale at which irreversible dissipation occurs. By assuming that particles are typically energized by an amount comparable to the free energy (per particle) before equilibrating, we derive a formula for the power-law index as a function of plasma parameters for magnetic dissipation in systems with sufficiently complex topologies. The model reproduces several results from kinetic simulations of relativistic turbulence and magnetic reconnection.