Statistics of Energy Dissipation rate at reconnection sites

Abstract

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\u27s magnetopause, small-scale reconnection in the Earth\u27s 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