Magnetic reconnection as an energy cascade process
arXiv:2104.12013 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.104.065206
Abstract
Reconnection and turbulence are two of the most commonly observed dynamical processes in plasmas, but their relationship is still not fully understood. Using 2.5D kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of both strong turbulence and reconnection, we compare the cross-scale transfer of energy in the two systems by analyzing the generalization of the von Kármán Howarth equations for Hall magnetohydrodynamics, a formulation that subsumes the third-order law for steady cascade rates. Even though the large scale features are quite different, the finding is that the decomposition of the energy transfer is structurally very similar in the two cases. In the reconnection case, the time evolution of the energy transfer also exhibits a correlation with the reconnection rate. These results provide explicit evidence that reconnection itself is fundamentally an energy cascade process.
References in corpus (10)
- 3D Turbulent Reconnection: Theory, Tests and Astrophysical Implications
- Magnetic reconnection as a driver for a sub-ion scale cascade in plasma turbulence
- Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence mediated by reconnection
- Turbulence and cooling in galaxy cluster cores
- MHD Turbulence
- Anisotropy of third-order structure functions in MHD turbulence
- Exploring the Statistics of Magnetic Reconnection X-points in Kinetic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) Turbulence
- Spectral transfer and Kármán-Howarth-Monin equations for compressible Hall magnetohydrodynamics
- Local regimes of turbulence in 3D magnetic reconnection
- Scale-to-scale energy transfer rate in compressible two-fluid plasma turbulence
Cited by in corpus (9)
- Pressure-Strain Interaction as the Energy Dissipation Estimate in Collisionless Plasma
- Strategies for determining the cascade rate in MHD turbulence: isotropy, anisotropy, and spacecraft sampling
- Spectral properties and energy transfer at kinetic scales in collisionless plasma turbulence
- Subion Scale Turbulence Driven by Magnetic Reconnection
- Energy transport during 3D small-scale reconnection driven by anisotropic plasma turbulence
- Electron-Scale Current Sheets and Energy Dissipation in 3D Kinetic-Scale Plasma Turbulence with Low Electron Beta
- Local extraction of three-dimensional magnetic reconnection X-lines
- Anisotropic electron heating in turbulence-driven magnetic reconnection in the near-Sun solar wind
- Ion-scale transition of plasma turbulence: Pressure-strain effect