Effect of a guide field on the turbulence like properties of magnetic reconnection

Journal article

S. Adhikari, M. A. Shay, T. N. Parashar, W. H. Matthaeus, P. S. Pyakurel, J. E. Stawarz, J. P. Eastwood
Physics of Plasmas, vol. 30(082904), 2023

DOI: 10.1063/5.0150929

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APA Click to copy
Adhikari, S., Shay, M. A., Parashar, T. N., Matthaeus, W. H., Pyakurel, P. S., Stawarz, J. E., & Eastwood, J. P. (2023). Effect of a guide field on the turbulence like properties of magnetic reconnection. Physics of Plasmas, 30(082904). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0150929

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Adhikari, S., M. A. Shay, T. N. Parashar, W. H. Matthaeus, P. S. Pyakurel, J. E. Stawarz, and J. P. Eastwood. “Effect of a Guide Field on the Turbulence like Properties of Magnetic Reconnection.” Physics of Plasmas 30, no. 082904 (2023).

MLA Click to copy
Adhikari, S., et al. “Effect of a Guide Field on the Turbulence like Properties of Magnetic Reconnection.” Physics of Plasmas, vol. 30, no. 082904, 2023, doi:10.1063/5.0150929.

BibTeX Click to copy

@article{s2023a,
  title = {Effect of a guide field on the turbulence like properties of magnetic reconnection},
  year = {2023},
  issue = {082904},
  journal = {Physics of Plasmas},
  volume = {30},
  doi = {10.1063/5.0150929},
  author = {Adhikari, S. and Shay, M. A. and Parashar, T. N. and Matthaeus, W. H. and Pyakurel, P. S. and Stawarz, J. E. and Eastwood, J. P.}
}

Abstract

The effect of an external guide field on the turbulence-like properties of magnetic reconnection is studied using five different 2.5D kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The magnetic energy spectrum is found to exhibit a slope of approximately −5/3 in the inertial range, independent of the guide field. On the contrary, the electric field spectrum in the inertial range steepens more with the guide field and approaches a slope of −5/3. In addition, spectral analysis of the different terms of the generalized Ohm's law is performed and found to be consistent with PIC simulations of turbulence and MMS observations. Finally, the guide field effect on the energy transfer behavior is examined using the von Kármán–Howarth (vKH) equation based on incompressible Hall-MHD. The general characteristics of the vKH equation with constant rate of energy transfer in the inertial range are consistent in all the simulations. This suggests that the qualitative behavior of energy spectrum and energy transfer in reconnection are similar to that of turbulence, indicating that reconnection fundamentally involves an energy cascade.