Effective viscosity, resistivity, and Reynolds number in weakly collisional plasma turbulence

Abstract

We examine dissipation and energy conversion in weakly collisional plasma turbulence, employing in situ observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission and kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of proton-electron plasma. A previous result indicated the presence of viscous-like and resistive-like scaling of average energy conversion rates -analogous to scalings characteristic of collisional systems. This allows for extraction of collisional-like coefficients of effective viscosity and resistivity, and thus also determination of ef fecti v e Re ynolds numbers based on these coef ficients. The ef fecti v e Re ynolds number, as a measure of the available bandwidth for turbulence to populate various scales, links turbulence macroscale properties with kinetic plasma properties in a no v el way.