Description
Understanding the properties of turbulent fluctuations and the mechanisms underlying their transfer through scales and dissipation is crucial to understand how turbulence feeds back on the macro-scale evolution and energetics of a wide range of space and astrophysical plasmas. In this context, the solar wind and the near-Earth environment are probably the best laboratory for the study of plasma turbulence. Over the past decades, in-situ measurements from space missions have indeed uncovered a complex scenario whereby several collisionless plasma processes may be simultaneously at play within the turbulent cascade (e.g., from magnetic reconnection to wave-particle interaction and cascades in velocity space). Alongside observations, direct numerical simulations have always played a key role in providing a test ground for the existing theories and models of plasma turbulence and turbulent heating.
In this talk, I will discuss recent advances in our understanding of sub-ion-range turbulence and turbulent heating via hybrid-kinetic simulations.