Energy transfer in reconnection and turbulence

S. Adhikari, T. N. Parashar, M. A. Shay, W. H. Matthaeus, P. S. Pyakurel, S. Fordin, J. E. Stawarz, and J. P. Eastwood
Phys. Rev. E 104, 065206 – Published 21 December 2021

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 energy transfer 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 dynamics fundamentally involves turbulence-like energy transfer.

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  • Received 3 March 2021
  • Revised 1 July 2021
  • Accepted 3 December 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.104.065206

©2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Plasma Physics

Authors & Affiliations

S. Adhikari1,*, T. N. Parashar2,1, M. A. Shay1,3, W. H. Matthaeus1,3, P. S. Pyakurel4, S. Fordin1, J. E. Stawarz5, and J. P. Eastwood5

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA
  • 2School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
  • 3Bartol Research Institute, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA
  • 4Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 5Department of Physics, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

  • *subash@udel.edu

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Issue

Vol. 104, Iss. 6 — December 2021

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