Nature Communications (Feb 2019)

Evidence for electron Landau damping in space plasma turbulence

  • C. H. K. Chen,
  • K. G. Klein,
  • G. G. Howes

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08435-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Various physical mechanisms are proposed to explain the heating observed in turbulent astrophysical plasmas. Here, Chen et al. find a signature consistent with one of these mechanisms, electron Landau damping, by applying a field-particle correlation technique to in situ spacecraft data of turbulence in the Earth’s magnetosheath.