Kinetic Turbulence and Damping in the Magnetosheath
christopher.chen@qmul.ac.uk
Queen Mary University of London
With the launch of the MMS spacecraft a few years ago, we now have the capability to study turbulence in the magnetosheath at higher resolution than ever before. Here, I will present recent work using the MMS data to investigate the nature of kinetic turbulence at electron scales and the nature of the damping mechanisms of the turbulence at these scales. Focussing on an interval of magnetosheath data near the magnetopause, the nature of the turbulence was found to change as the electron inertial scale is reached, transitioning to a regime of inertial kinetic Alfven turbulence - I will present observations and a theoretical model for this turbulence. I will also describe our recent application of a field-particle correlation technique to the MMS data, which enables the energy transfer in velocity space to be determined. The results of this are consistent with the presence of electron Landau damping in the kinetic range.