Scale filtering analysis of kinetic reconnection and its associated turbulence

Abstract

Previously, using an incompressible von Kármán–Howarth formalism, the behavior of cross-scale energy transfer in magnetic reconnection and turbulence was found to be essentially identical to each other, independent of an external magnetic (guide) field, in the inertial and energy-containing ranges [Adhikari et al., Phys. Plasmas 30, 082904 (2023)]. However, this description did not account for the energy transfer in the dissipation range for kinetic plasmas. In this Letter, we adopt a scale-filtering approach to investigate this previously unaccounted-for energy transfer channel in reconnection. Using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of antiparallel and component reconnection, we show that the pressure–strain interaction becomes important at scales smaller than the ion inertial length, where the nonlinear energy transfer term drops off. Also, the presence of a guide field makes a significant difference in the morphology of the scale-filtered energy transfer. These results are consistent with kinetic turbulence simulations, suggesting that the pressure strain interaction is the dominant energy transfer channel between electron scales and ion scales.