Using Direct Laboratory Measurements of Electron Temperature Anisotropy to Identify the Heating Mechanism in Electron-Only Guide Field Magnetic Reconnection.

Anisotropic electron heating during electron-only magnetic reconnection with a large guide magnetic field is directly measured in a laboratory plasma through in situ measurements of electron velocity distribution functions. Electron heating preferentially parallel to the magnetic field is localized to one separatrix, and anisotropies of 1.5 are measured. The mechanism for electron energization is identified as the parallel reconnection electric field because of the anisotropic nature of the heating and spatial localization. These characteristics are reproduced in a 2D particle-in-cell simulation and are also consistent with numerous magnetosheath observations. A measured increase in the perpendicular temperature along both separatrices is not reproduced by our 2D simulations. This work has implications for energy partition studies in magnetosheath and laboratory reconnection.

A Case for Electron-Astrophysics.

The smallest characteristic scales, at which electron dynamics determines the plasma behaviour, are the next frontier in space and astrophysical plasma research. The analysis of astrophysical processes at these scales lies at the heart of the research theme of electron-astrophysics. Electron scales are the ultimate bottleneck for dissipation of plasma turbulence, which is a fundamental process not understood in the electron-kinetic regime. In addition, plasma electrons often play an important role for the spatial transfer of thermal energy due to the high heat flux associated with their velocity distribution. The regulation of this electron heat flux is likewise not understood. By focussing on these and other fundamental electron processes, the research theme of electron-astrophysics links outstanding science questions of great importance to the fields of space physics, astrophysics, and laboratory plasma physics. In this White Paper, submitted to ESA in response to the Voyage 2050 call, we review a selection of these outstanding questions, discuss their importance, and present a roadmap for answering them through novel space-mission concepts.

Third-moment descriptions of the interplanetary turbulent cascade, intermittency and back transfer.

We review some aspects of solar wind turbulence with an emphasis on the ability of the turbulence to account for the observed heating of the solar wind. Particular attention is paid to the use of structure functions in computing energy cascade rates and their general agreement with the measured thermal proton heating. We then examine the use of 1 h data samples that are comparable in length to the correlation length for the fluctuations to obtain insights into local inertial range dynamics and find evidence for intermittency in the computed energy cascade rates. When the magnetic energy dominates the kinetic energy, there is evidence of anti-correlation in the cascade of energy associated with the outward- and inward-propagating components that we can only partially explain.

Structure of the Current Sheet in the 11 July 2017 Electron Diffusion Region Event.

The structure of the current sheet along the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) orbit is examined during the 11 July 2017 Electron Diffusion Region (EDR) event. The location of MMS relative to the X-line is deduced and used to obtain the spatial changes in the electron parameters. The electron velocity gradient values are used to estimate the reconnection electric field sustained by nongyrotropic pressure. It is shown that the observations are consistent with theoretical expectations for an inner EDR in 2-D reconnection. That is, the magnetic field gradient scale, where the electric field due to electron nongyrotropic pressure dominates, is comparable to the gyroscale of the thermal electrons at the edge of the inner EDR. Our approximation of the MMS observations using a steady state, quasi-2-D, tailward retreating X-line was valid only for about 1.4 s. This suggests that the inner EDR is localized; that is, electron outflow jet braking takes place within an ion inertia scale from the X-line. The existence of multiple events or current sheet processes outside the EDR may play an important role in the geometry of reconnection in the near-Earth magnetotail.

Energy partitioning constraints at kinetic scales in low-ß turbulence.

Turbulence is a fundamental physical process through which energy injected into a system at large scales cascades to smaller scales. In collisionless plasmas, turbulence provides a critical mechanism for dissipating electromagnetic energy. Here we present observations of plasma fluctuations in low-ß turbulence using data from NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission in Earth's magnetosheath. We provide constraints on the partitioning of turbulent energy density in the fluid, ion-kinetic, and electron-kinetic ranges. Magnetic field fluctuations dominated the energy density spectrum throughout the fluid and ion-kinetic ranges, consistent with previous observations of turbulence in similar plasma regimes. However, at scales shorter than the electron inertial length, fluctuation power in electron kinetic energy significantly exceeded that of the magnetic field, resulting in an electron-motion-regulated cascade at small scales. This dominance should be highly relevant for the study of turbulence in highly magnetized laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.

Small-scale behavior of Hall magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

Decaying Hall magnetohydrodynamic (HMHD) turbulence is studied using three-dimensional (3D) direct numerical simulations with grids up to 768(3) points and two different types of initial conditions. Results are compared to analogous magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) runs and both Laplacian and Laplacian-squared dissipative operators are examined. At scales below the ion inertial length, the ratio of magnetic to kinetic energy as a function of wave number transitions to a magnetically dominated state. The transition in behavior is associated with the advection term in the momentum equation becoming subdominant to dissipation. Examination of autocorrelation functions reveals that, while current and vorticity structures are similarly sized in MHD, HMHD current structures are narrower and vorticity structures are wider. The electric field autocorrelation function is significantly narrower in HMHD than in MHD and is similar to the HMHD current autocorrelation function at small separations. HMHD current structures are found to be significantly more intense than in MHD and appear to have an enhanced association with strong alignment between the current and magnetic field, which may be important in collisionless plasmas where field-aligned currents can be unstable. When hyperdiffusivity is used, a longer region consistent with a k(-7/3) scaling is present for right-polarized fluctuations when compared to Laplacian dissipation runs.

Long-time properties of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and the role of symmetries.

Using direct numerical simulations with grids of up to 512(3) points, we investigate long-time properties of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the absence of forcing and examine in particular the roles played by the quadratic invariants of the system and the symmetries of the initial configurations. We observe that when sufficient accuracy is used, initial conditions with a high degree of symmetries, as in the absence of helicity, do not travel through parameter space over time, whereas by perturbing these solutions either explicitly or implicitly using, for example, single precision for long times, the flows depart from their original behavior and can either become strongly helical or have a strong alignment between the velocity and the magnetic field. When the symmetries are broken, the flows evolve towards different end states, as already predicted by statistical arguments for nondissipative systems with the addition of an energy minimization principle. Increasing the Reynolds number by an order of magnitude when using grids of 64(3)-512(3) points does not alter these conclusions. Furthermore, the alignment properties of these flows, between velocity, vorticity, magnetic potential, induction, and current, correspond to the dominance of two main regimes, one helically dominated and one in quasiequipartition of kinetic and magnetic energies. We also contrast the scaling of the ratio of magnetic energy to kinetic energy as a function of wave number to the ratio of eddy turnover time to Alfvén time as a function of wave number. We find that the former ratio is constant with an approximate equipartition for scales smaller than the largest scale of the flow, whereas the ratio of time scales increases with increasing wave number.