A grand challenge problem at the forefront of heliophysics is to understand how the energy of plasma flows and electromagnetic fields is converted into energy of the plasma particles, either as heat…

This federal contract award to The University of Iowa supports research to understand how energy is converted and distributed in high-temperature, low-density turbulent plasmas found in space environments. The $493,723 grant was awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to apply a novel field-particle correlation technique to data from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. The goal is to diagnose the mechanisms responsible for the removal of energy from turbulent fluctuations and characterize the distribution of this energy to particles. This research directly addresses high-priority objectives from the 2013 National Research Council Heliophysics Decadal Survey. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, reflecting The University of Iowa's status as a large public research institution. This award is part of the university's extensive portfolio of federal research funding from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.

A grand challenge problem at the forefront of heliophysics is to understand how the energy of plasma flows and electromagnetic fields is converted into energy of the plasma particles, either as heat or some other form of particle energization. Under the typically low-density and high-temperature conditions of turbulent plasmas in the heliosphere and planetary magnetospheres, the turbulent dynamics is weakly collisional, requiring the application of six-dimensional (3D-3V) kinetic plasma theory to follow the evolution of the turbulence, where the damping of the turbulent fluctuations occurs due to collisionless interactions between the electromagnetic fields and the individual plasma particles. A recently devised, innovative method for diagnosing the energization of particles uses correlations between the electromagnetic field and particle velocity distribution function measurements. Here we propose the first dedicated effort to apply this novel field-particle correlation technique to the unprecedented high-resolution field and particle measurements from the MMS mission, with the goals to diagnose the mechanisms responsible for the collisionless removal of energy from the turbulent fluctuations and to characterize how this removed energy is distributed to particles with different velocities. This project directly addresses the high-level science goal of the 2013 NRC heliophysics decadal survey to "understand the fundamental physical processes of the space environment from the sun to earth, to other planets, and beyond to the interstellar medium."