Collisionless Reconnection in Magnetohydrodynamic and Kinetic Turbulence

Loureiro, Nuno F.; Boldyrev, Stanislav

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa9754

Title: Collisionless Reconnection in Magnetohydrodynamic and Kinetic Turbulence

Journal Article · Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2017 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa9754· OSTI ID:1542012

^[1]; Boldyrev, Stanislav ^[2]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Space Science Inst., Boulder, CO (United States)

It has recently been presented that the inertial interval in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is terminated at small scales not by a Kolmogorov-like dissipation region, but rather by a new sub-inertial interval mediated by tearing instability. Yet, many astrophysical plasmas are nearly collisionless so the MHD approximation is not applicable to turbulence at small scales. In this paper, we propose an extension of the theory of reconnection-mediated turbulence to plasmas which are so weakly collisional that the reconnection occurring in the turbulent eddies is caused by electron inertia rather than by resistivity. We find that the transition scale to reconnection-mediated turbulence depends on the plasma beta and on the assumptions of the plasma turbulence model. However, in all of the cases analyzed, the energy spectra in the reconnection-mediated interval range from $$E({k}_{\perp }){{dk}}_{\perp }\propto {k}_{\perp }^{-8/3}{{dk}}_{\perp }$$ to $$E({k}_{\perp }){{dk}}_{\perp }\propto {k}_{\perp }^{-3}{{dk}}_{\perp }$$.

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Research Organization:: Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0016215; AGS-1261659; PHY-1707272

OSTI ID:: 1542012

Journal Information:: The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 850, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 68 works

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