Energy dissipation processes in solar wind turbulence

Abstract

Turbulence is a chaotic flow regime filled by irregular flows. The dissipation of turbulence is a fundamental problem in the realm of physics. Theoretically, dissipation cannot be ultimately achieved without collisions, and so how turbulent kinetic energy is dissipated in the nearly collisionless solar wind is a challenging problem. Wave particle interactions and magnetic reconnection are two possible dissipation mechanisms, but which mechanism dominates is still a controversial topic. Here we analyze the dissipation region scaling around a solar wind magnetic reconnection region. We find that the magnetic reconnection region shows a unique multifractal scaling in the dissipation range, while the ambient solar wind turbulence reveals a monofractal dissipation process for most of the time. These results provide the first observational evidences for the intermittent multifractal dissipation region scaling around a magnetic reconnection site, and they also have significant implications for the fundamental energy dissipation process.