Statistics of Energy Dissipation rate at reconnection sites

Authors: Sohom Roy (University of Delaware), Riddhi Bandyopadhyay (Princeton University), William H. Matthaeus (University of Delaware), Alexandros Chasapis (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics), Yan Yang (University of Delaware)

Magnetic reconnection is considered to play a central role in dissipating turbulent energy in plasmas. Traditionally, the Ohmic dissipation measure ($\mathbf{j}.\mathbf{E}$) has been used to identify the dissipation region and calculate the dissipation rates in reconnection sites. However, recent works have shown that the pressure-strain rate may be a more appropriate measure of dissipation. We consider large-scale reconnection in the Earth’s magnetopause, small-scale reconnection in the Earth’s magnetosheath, and the electron-only reconnection sites recently observed by MMS in the magnetosheath. We carry out a statistical survey of the pressure-strain rates and the Ohmic dissipation measure at these different reconnection sites, in order to better understand the nature of energy conversion in reconnection.