A15 Simulations of reconnection and dynamo action in turbulent plasma flows

Prof. Dr. Jörg Büchner, Dr. Wolfram Schmidt

The macroscopic phenomena dynamo and reconnection require energy dissipation on micro-scales. Since astrophysical plasmas are usually hot and dilute, binary particle collisions cannot provide an irreversible energy conversion to heat. Instead, perhaps turbulence couples macroscopic motions to collisionless energy dissipation on microscales. The physical nature of magnetic turbulence and its consequences for dynamos and reconnection is a fundamental open problem, e.g. due to the involved non-linearity and non-locality of the interactions as well as the large range of scales, which have to be bridged. We address this problem by advanced numerical simulations.