Evidence for Electron Landau Damping in Space Plasma Turbulence

One of the unanswered questions in space plasma physics is how energy is dissipated at the small scale end of the turbulent cascade. To help address this, we apply a new field-particle correlation technique to measure the energy transfer to particles in magnetosheath turbulence. The technique separates the oscillatory and secular components and allows the secular energy transfer to be measured in velocity space. Here, we present results of the parallel transfer to electrons, which shows signatures consistent with Landau damping. This suggests electron Landau damping may play a significant role in turbulent dissipation and that the technique is a useful tool to understand the processes involved in turbulent dissipation.