Electron inertia effects in 3D hybrid-kinetic collisionless plasma turbulence

Abstract

The effects of the electron inertia on the current sheets that are formed out of kinetic turbulence are relevant to understand the importance of coherent structures in turbulence and the nature of turbulence at the dissipation scales. We investigate this problem by carrying out 3D hybrid-kinetic Particle-in-Cell simulations of decaying kinetic turbulence with our CHIEF code. The main distinguishing feature of this code is an implementation of the electron inertia without approximations. Our simulation results show that the electron inertia plays an important role in regulating and limiting the largest values of current density in both real and wavenumber Fourier space, in particular, near and, unexpectedly, even above electron scales. In addition, the electric field associated with the electron inertia dominates most of the strongest current sheets. The electron inertia is thus important to accurately describe the properties of current sheets formed in turbulence at electron scales.