A parametric study of the turbulent energy transfer in three-dimensional lattice-Boltzmann Hall-MHD plasma simulations

Observations from heliospheric missions have deepened our understanding of the solar wind. However, the complexity arising from its quasi-collisionless and multiscale nature leaves open several key questions on how energy is transferred and dissipated in the interplanetary plasma. In this parametric study, we investigate turbulent energy transfer and intermittent plasma processes in three-dimensional direct numerical simulations, in the Hall-MHD framework, performed with the fast lattice-Boltzmann algorithm for magnetohydrodynamics experiments [Foldes et al., “Evidence of dual energy transfer driven by magnetic reconnection at subion scales,” Phys. Rev. E 110, 055207 (2024)]. We analyze properties of the global and pseudo-local energy transfer to characterize the scale-dependent behavior of the energy cascade in Hall-MHD plasmas by means of the so-called local energy transfer proxy (or LET), the analysis of the probability distribution functions of the macroscopic fields, and the flatness of their increments. Our results indicate that scale-dependent structures, small-scale intermittency, and statistical properties in the plasma flow are sensitive to variations of the Hall term, providing insights that are potentially useful for the interpretation of space plasma dynamics.