Julia Stawarz - Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Space Plasmas: Insights from the MMS Mission

Julia Stawarz (Imperial College London) - Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Space Plasmas: Insights from the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission

Abstract:
Plasmas throughout the Universe exhibit highly nonlinear turbulent dynamics, which can lead to the formation of a variety of multiscale structures, as well as the acceleration and heating of particles within the plasma. The complex interplay between turbulence and another fundamental plasma processes, magnetic reconnection, has long been a topic of interest, both in terms of the generation of turbulence within large-scale reconnection outflows and the initiation of magnetic reconnection at the multitude of thin current structures formed by the turbulent fluctuations. Over the past six years, NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission has been providing a unique dataset of high-time-resolution, multi-spacecraft measurements of the plasma within Earth’s magnetosphere at spatial scales comparable to the electron length scales in the plasma, which provides an exceptional dataset for studying the dynamics of turbulent plasmas. In this seminar, I will give an overview of the work being done with MMS to examine the relationship between turbulence and magnetic reconnection across several regions in near-Earth space, including recent insights into a novel mode of magnetic reconnection – known as electron-only reconnection – which can occur in the Earth’s turbulent magnetosheath.

Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center's Conceptual Image Lab/Lisa Poje; Simulations by: Colby Haggerty (University of Chicago), Ashley Michini (University of Pennsylvania), Tulasi Parashar (University of Delaware)

[davidthemens]

Really nice presentation! Thanks for posting and thanks to Julia for delivering such a wonderful talk.