Collaborative Research: Unveiling the Interplay Between Magnetic Reconnection and Turbulence-Theory and Modeling

With a concerted effort in theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, the project will investigate and tackle several outstanding questions, e.g., how does magnetic reconnection occurring in the turbulent plasma affect particle acceleration for an electron-ion plasma? The proposed research combines state-of-the-art numerical simulations and theoretical analysis to explore the frontier of the interplay between turbulence and magnetic reconnection in the new regime where the plasmoid instability mediates the energy cascade. This uncharted regime could have profound implications on how energy at large scales cascades down to small scales and eventually converts into thermal and nonthermal energy of particles. The numerical models (MHD and fully kinetic PIC) cover the broad range of scales involved in this process. The idea that test particles in MHD turbulence with a proper injection prescription may correctly capture the dominant particle acceleration mechanisms, if confirmed, will open up the possibility of modeling particle energization in large-scale turbulent systems without involving details at kinetic scales.