The Importance of Electron Landau Damping for the Dissipation of Turbulent Energy in Terrestrial Magnetosheath Plasma

Abstract

Heliospheric plasma turbulence plays a key role in transferring the energy of large-scale magnetic field and plasma flow fluctuations to smaller scales where the energy can be dissipated, ultimately leading to plasma heating. High-quality measurements of electromagnetic fields and electron velocity distributions by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission in Earth's magnetosheath present a unique opportunity to characterize plasma turbulence and to determine the mechanisms responsible for its dissipation. We apply the field-particle correlation technique to a set of twenty MMS magnetosheath intervals to identify the dissipation mechanism and quantify the dissipation rate. It is found that 95% of the intervals have velocity-space signatures of electron Landau damping that are quantitatively consistent with linear kinetic theory for the collisionless damping of kinetic Alfvén waves. About 75% of the intervals contain asymmetric signatures, indicating a local imbalance of kinetic Alfvén wave energy flux in one direction along the magnetic field than the other. About one third of the intervals have an electron energization rate with the same order-of-magnitude as the estimated turbulent cascade rate, suggesting that electron Landau damping plays a significant, and sometimes dominant, role in the dissipation of the turbulent energy in these magnetosheath intervals.

26 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, JGR Space Physics

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• Phase-space entropy cascade and irreversibility of stochastic heating in nearly collisionless plasma turbulence
• The Velocity-Space Signature of Transit-Time Damping
• Identification of coupled Landau and anomalous resonances in space plasmas
• Isolation and Phase-Space Energization Analysis of the Instabilities in Collisionless Shocks
• Turbulent Energy Conversion Associated with Kinetic Microinstabilities in Earth's Magnetosheath
• Unveiling the Velocity-Space Signature of Ion Cyclotron Damping Using Liouville Mapping
• Observing Particle Energization above the Nyquist Frequency: An Application of the Field-Particle Correlation Technique
• Characterizing Velocity-Space Signatures of Electron Energization in Large-Guide-Field Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection