Observations of Thin Current Sheets in the Solar Wind and Their Role in Magnetic Energy Dissipation

International audienceA recent analysis of 450 vec/s resolution data from the STAFF search-coil magnetometer on board Cluster has revealed, for the first time, the presence of thin current sheets and discontinuities from the proton Larmor scale down to the electron Larmor scale in the solar wind. This is in the range of scales where a cascade of energy consistent with highly oblique kinetic Alfvénic fluctuations (KAW), eventually dissipated by electron Landau damping, has been detected. The current sheets have been found to have a size between 20-200 km, indicating that they are very localized. We will compare the observations with results coming from 2D Hall MHD, Gyrokinetic, and full Particle-in-Cell turbulence simulations. Preliminary work has highlighted promising qualitative agreement between the properties of the structures observed in the Cluster data and the current sheets generated in the simulations. With the aim of investigating the role played by those structures in dissipating the magnetic energy in the solar wind, E●J has been computed within each magnetic discontinuity. This has been made possible via a combined analysis of both STAFF-SC magnetic field data and the electric field data from the Electric Fields and Wave instrument (EFW). We describe procedures used to reduce the noise in the EFW data. The results obtained represent an effort to clarify the processes involved in the dissipation of magnetic energy in the solar wind