Effect of Turbulence Amplitude and Correlation Length on Magnetic Reconnection Dynamics in Hybrid Simulations of Collisionless Plasmas

The interplay between turbulence and magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasmas is of great interest in many different space and astrophysical environments. Turbulence generates ion-scale current sheets (CSs) which reconnect, driving a turbulent cascade at sub-ion scales and thus providing a channel for energy dissipation. We present a collection of high-resolution 2D and 3D hybrid (kinetic ions, fluid electrons) simulations of plasma turbulence with different physical parameters to investigate how the macroscopic properties of the turbulent plasma background affect the dynamics and statistics of magnetic reconnection. We focus our analysis on the impact of two key parameters: the energy injection scale (i.e., the turbulence correlation length) and the amplitude of the initial fluctuations with respect to the ambient magnetic field (i.e., the turbulence strength). These two, combined, also determine the nonlinear time associated with the turbulent cascade. We first compare the similarity and differences in the properties and dynamics of the turbulence itself (shape and size of coherent structures in real space, spectral properties of the turbulent fluctuations, energy transfer rate) and then the changes in the properties and dynamics of the CSs undergoing reconnection (CS thickness and aspect ratio, reconnection rate). We discuss how the above properties rescale with respect to the two key parameters in the context of existing theories and models for turbulence and magnetic reconnection and the physical implications of our findings.