  Intermittency of heating in weakly collisional plasma turbulence is an active
subject of research, with significant potential impact on understanding of the
solar wind, solar corona and astrophysical plasmas. Recent studies suggest a
role of vorticity in plasma heating. In magnetohydrodynamics small scale
vorticity is generated near current sheets and this effect persists in kinetic
plasma, as demonstrated here with hybrid and fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell
(PIC) simulations. Furthermore, vorticity enhances local kinetic effects, with
a generalized resonance condition selecting sign-dependent enhancements or
reductions of proton heating and thermal anisotropy. In such plasmas heating is
correlated with vorticity and current density, but more strongly with
vorticity. These results help explain several prior results that find kinetic
effects and energization near to, but not centered on, current sheets.
Evidently intermittency in kinetic plasma involves multiple physical
quantities, and the associated coherent structures and nonthermal effects are
closely related.
