Electron Heating by Debye-Scale Turbulence in Guide-Field Reconnection

Abstract

We report electrostatic Debye-scale turbulence developing within the diffusion region of asymmetric magnetopause reconnection with moderate guide field using observations by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. We show that Buneman waves and beam modes cause efficient and fast thermalization of the reconnection electron jet by irreversible phase mixing, during which the jet kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy. Our results show that the reconnection diffusion region in the presence of a moderate guide field is highly turbulent, and that electrostatic turbulence plays an important role in electron heating.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Electron-Scale Dynamics of the Diffusion Region during Symmetric Magnetic Reconnection in Space
• Universality of lower hybrid waves at Earth's magnetopause
• Bipolar Electric Field Signatures of Reconnection Separatrices for a Hydrogen Plasma at Realistic Guide Fields
• How Anomalous Resistivity Accelerates Magnetic Reconnection
• Kinetic turbulence in fast 3D collisionless guide-field magnetic reconnection
• The Adiabatic Phase Mixing and Heating of Electrons in Buneman Turbulence

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• On the origin of "patchy" energy conversion in electron diffusion regions
• Evidence of oblique electron acoustic solitary waves triggered by magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere
• On the applicability of single-spacecraft interferometry methods using electric field probes
• Short wavelength electrostatic wave measurement using MMS spacecraft
• The dynamics of electron holes in current sheets