A three-dimensional, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation of plasma turbulence resolving scales from the ion to electron gyroradius with a realistic mass ratio is presented, where all damping is provided by resolved physical mechanisms. The resulting energy spectra are quantitatively consistent with a magnetic power spectrum scaling of k(-2.8) as observed in in situ spacecraft measurements of the "dissipation range" of solar wind turbulence. Despite the strongly nonlinear nature of the turbulence, the linear kinetic Alfvén wave mode quantitatively describes the polarization of the turbulent fluctuations. The collisional ion heating is measured at subion-Larmor radius scales, which provides evidence of the ion entropy cascade in an electromagnetic turbulence simulation.

We present the first study of the formation and dissipation of current sheets at electron scales in a wave-driven, weakly collisional, 3D kinetic turbulence simulation. We investigate the relative importance of dissipation associated with collisionless damping via resonant wave-particle interactions versus dissipation in small-scale current sheets in weakly collisional plasma turbulence. Current sheets form self-consistently from the wave-driven turbulence, and their filling fraction is well correlated to the electron heating rate. However, the weakly collisional nature of the simulation necessarily implies that the current sheets are not significantly dissipated via Ohmic dissipation. Rather, collisionless damping via the Landau resonance with the electrons is sufficient to account for the measured heating as a function of scale in the simulation, without the need for significant Ohmic dissipation. This finding suggests the possibility that the dissipation of the current sheets is governed by resonant wave-particle interactions and that the locations of current sheets correspond spatially to regions of enhanced heating.

Determining the physical mechanisms that extract energy from turbulent fluctuations in weakly collisional magnetized plasmas is necessary for a more complete characterization of the behaviour of a variety of space and astrophysical plasmas. Such a determination is complicated by the complex nature of the turbulence as well as observational constraints, chiefly that in situ measurements of such plasmas are typically only available at a single point in space. Recent work has shown that correlations between electric fields and particle velocity distributions constructed from single-point measurements produce a velocity-dependent signature of the collisionless damping mechanism. We extend this work by constructing field-particle correlations using data sets drawn from single points in strongly driven, turbulent, electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations to demonstrate that this technique can identify the collisionless mechanisms operating in such systems. The velocity-space structure of the correlation between proton distributions and parallel electric fields agrees with expectations of resonant mechanisms transferring energy collisionlessly in turbulent systems. This work motivates the eventual application of field-particle correlations to spacecraft measurements in the solar wind, with the ultimate goal to determine the physical mechanisms that dissipate magnetized plasma turbulence.

We use a large, statistical set of measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU, and supporting synthetic spacecraft data based on kinetic plasma theory, to show that the compressible component of inertial range solar wind turbulence is primarily in the kinetic slow mode. The zero-lag cross correlation C(δn, δB ) between proton density fluctuations δn and the field-aligned (compressible) component of the magnetic field δB is negative and close to −1. The typical dependence of C(δn, δB ) on the ion plasma beta βi is consistent with a spectrum of compressible wave energy that is almost entirely in the kinetic slow mode. This has important implications for both the nature of the density fluctuation spectrum and for the cascade of kinetic turbulence to short wavelengths, favoring evolution to the kinetic Alfvén wave mode rather than the (fast) whistler mode.PACS numbers: 96.50. Ci, 94.05.Lk, 52.35.Ra

We present a full two-fluid magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) description for a completely ionized hydrogen plasma, retaining the effects of the Hall current, electron pressure, and electron inertia. According to this description, each plasma species introduces a new spatial scale: the ion inertial length k i and the electron inertial length k e , which are not present in the traditional MHD description. In the present paper, we seek for possible changes in the energy power spectrum in fully developed turbulent regimes, using numerical simulations of the two-fluid equations in two-and-a-half dimensions. We have been able to reproduce different scaling laws in different spectral ranges, as it has been observed in the solar wind for the magnetic energy spectrum. At the smallest wavenumbers where plain MHD is valid, we obtain an inertial range following a Kolmogorov k À5=3 law. For intermediate wavenumbers such that k À1 i (k (k À1 e , the spectrum is modified to a k À7=3 power-law, as has also been obtained for Hall-MHD neglecting electron inertia terms. When electron inertia is retained, a new spectral region given by k > k À1 e arises. The power spectrum for magnetic energy in this region is given by a k À11=3 power law. Finally, when the terms of electron inertia are retained, we study the self-consistent electric field. Our results are discussed and compared with those obtained in the solar wind observations and previous simulations. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.