Speaker
Description
It is known that magnetic reconnection can occur in current sheets generated by collisionless turbulence in space and astrophysical plasmas, a process known as turbulence-driven reconnection. The importance of this process for the turbulence properties is, however, still not well understood. Although significant simulation work has been done on this topic in 2D and at MHD and ion-scales, the consequences of electron-scale effects such as electron inertia are relatively unexplored, and more so in 3D. Those effects can control the dissipation of turbulence and enable reconnection.
Here we focus on assessing and quantifying the consequences of turbulence-driven reconnection and current sheets by comparing 3D simulations carried out with three different plasma models: fully-kinetic and hybrid-kinetic with and without electron inertia. Our results show that electron effects are important for turbulence-driven reconnection not only at electron-scales, but even above them.
