Rueda, Jeffersson A Agudelo;
Verscharen, Daniel;
Wicks, Robert T;
Owen, Christopher J;
Nicolaou, Georgios;
Germaschewski, Kai;
Walsh, Andrew P;
... Domínguez, Santiago Vargas; + view all
(2022)
Energy transport during 3D small-scale reconnection driven by anisotropic plasma turbulence.
The Astrophysical Journal
, 938
(1)
, Article 4. 10.3847/1538-4357/ac8667.
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Abstract
Energy dissipation in collisionless plasmas is a long-standing fundamental physics problem. Although it is well known that magnetic reconnection and turbulence are coupled and transport energy from system-size scales to subproton scales, the details of the energy distribution and energy dissipation channels remain poorly understood. Especially, the energy transfer and transport associated with 3D small-scale reconnection that occurs as a consequence of a turbulent cascade is unknown. We use an explicit fully kinetic particle-in-cell code to simulate 3D small-scale magnetic reconnection events forming in anisotropic and decaying Alfvénic turbulence. We identify a highly dynamic and asymmetric reconnection event that involves two reconnecting flux ropes. We use a two-fluid approach based on the Boltzmann equation to study the spatial energy transfer associated with the reconnection event and compare the power density terms in the two-fluid energy equations with standard energy-based damping, heating, and dissipation proxies. Our findings suggest that the electron bulk flow transports thermal energy density more efficiently than kinetic energy density. Moreover, in our turbulent reconnection event, the energy density transfer is dominated by plasma compression. This is consistent with turbulent current sheets and turbulent reconnection events, but not with laminar reconnection.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Energy transport during 3D small-scale reconnection driven by anisotropic plasma turbulence |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3847/1538-4357/ac8667 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac8667 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10153729 |
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