Fluid modeling of magnetized plasmas with anisotropic temperatures

We discuss a fluid model for magnetized plasmas that extends the anisotropic magnetohydrodynamics down to the ion gyroscale and below, by retaining low-frequency kinetic effects such as Landau damping and finite Larmor radius (FLR) corrections. Landau damping depletes compressible effects and inhibits longitudinal transfer, but also leads to a correct description of the mirror instability threshold, while FLR corrections arrest the mirror instability at small scales and ensure an accurate dispersion relation for kinetic Alfven waves. This model provides an efficient tool to describe the solar wind dynamics. Simulations of non-resonant ion perpendicular heating under the effect of turbulence driven by kinetic Alfven waves, together with the constraining effect of the resulting mirror instability that maintains the system near threshold are in particular discussed and successfully compared with slow solar wind observations.