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Title: Current Sheets and Collisionless Damping in Kinetic Plasma Turbulence

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters
 [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

Here, we present the first study of the formation and dissipation of current sheets at electron scales in a wave-driven, weakly collisional, three-dimensional kinetic turbulence simulation. We investigate the relative importance of dissipation associated with collisionless damping via resonant wave-particle interactions versus dissipation in small-scale current sheets in weakly collisional plasma turbulence. Current sheets form self-consistently from the wave-driven turbulence, and their filling fraction is well correlated to the electron heating rate. However, the weakly collisional nature of the simulation necessarily implies that the current sheets are not significantly dissipated via Ohmic dissipation. Rather, collisionless damping via the Landau resonance with the electrons is sufficient to account for the measured heating as a function of scale in the simulation, without the need for significant Ohmic dissipation. This finding suggests the possibility that the dissipation of the current sheets is governed by resonant wave-particle interactions and that the locations of current sheets correspond spatially to regions of enhanced heating.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1565033
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters, Vol. 771, Issue 2; ISSN 2041-8205
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 120 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Nonlinear energy transfer and current sheet development in localized Alfvén wavepacket collisions in the strong turbulence limit journal January 2018
Spatially localized particle energization by Landau damping in current sheets produced by strong Alfvén wave collisions journal January 2018
The Alfvénic nature of energy transfer mediation in localized, strongly nonlinear Alfvén wavepacket collisions journal January 2018
Interplay between intermittency and dissipation in collisionless plasma turbulence journal June 2019
Collisionless energy transfer in kinetic turbulence: field–particle correlations in Fourier space journal July 2019
Evidence for electron Landau damping in space plasma turbulence journal February 2019
Energy transfer, pressure tensor, and heating of kinetic plasma journal July 2017
Laboratory space physics: Investigating the physics of space plasmas in the laboratory journal May 2018
Velocity-space cascade in magnetized plasmas: Numerical simulations journal June 2018
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Three-dimensional Simulations and Spacecraft Observations of Sub-ion Scale Turbulence in the Solar Wind: Influence of Landau Damping journal April 2017
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Dual phase-space cascades in 3D hybrid-Vlasov-Maxwell turbulence text January 2018
Interplay between intermittency and dissipation in collisionless plasma turbulence text January 2018
Scale dependence of energy transfer in turbulent plasma text January 2018
Wavelet Methods for Studying the Onset of Strong Plasma Turbulence text January 2018
Evidence for Electron Landau Damping in Space Plasma Turbulence text January 2019
Proton-proton collisions in the turbulent solar wind: Hybrid Boltzmann-Maxwell simulations text January 2019
Energy conversion in turbulent weakly-collisional plasmas: Eulerian Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell simulations text January 2019
Collisionless energy transfer in kinetic turbulence: field-particle correlations in Fourier space text January 2019
Observations of heating along intermittent structures in the inner heliosphere from PSP data text January 2019
Magnetohydrodynamic and kinetic scale turbulence in the near-Earth space plasmas: a (short) biased review journal February 2020
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Comparative study of gyrokinetic, hybrid-kinetic and fully kinetic wave physics for space plasmas text January 2016
Recent progress in astrophysical plasma turbulence from solar wind observations text January 2016
The multi-scale nature of the solar wind text January 2019

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