Factors controlling the statistics of magnetic reconnection in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: We study the statistics of dynamical quantities associated with magnetic reconnection events embedded in a sea of strong background magnetohydrodynamic turbulence using direct numerical simulations. We focus on the relationship of the reconnection properties to the statistics of global turbulent fields. We show that the distribution in turbulence of reconnection rates (determined by upstream fields) is strongly correlated with the magnitude of the global turbulent magnetic field at the correlation scale. The average reconnection rates, and associated dissipation rates, during turbulence are thus much larger than predicted by using turbulent magnetic field fluctuation amplitudes at the dissipation or kinetic scales. Magnetic reconnection may, therefore, be playing a major role in energy dissipation in astrophysical and heliospheric turbulence.

Source: Physical review. E

DOI: 10.1103/yjh7-hy2s

Authors: M. B. Khan, M. A. Shay, S. Oughton, W. H. Matthaeus, C. C. Haggerty, S. Adhikari, P. A. Cassak, S. Fordin, D. O'Donnell, Y. Yang, R. Bandyopadhyay, S. Roy

Institutions: University of Delaware, University of Waikato, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, West Virginia University, Goddard Space Flight Center, Princeton University

Language: English

Topic: Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Office of Science

OpenAlex ID: W4415318381