Post by International Space Science Institute(ISSI)

"Excitation and Dissipation of Kinetic-scale Fluctuations in Space Plasmas" is the focus of this week's ISSI International Team #612, led by Kristopher Klein and Daniel Verscharen. The team’s main aim is to connect high-resolution measurements of particle velocity distributions from missions such as #ParkerSolarProbe, #SolarOrbiter, and MMS with modern kinetic theory, machine-learning methods, and nonlinear simulations. This matters because these small-scale processes control how energy is transferred between particles and electromagnetic fields, shaping the heating, transport, and large-scale evolution of collisionless plasmas such as the solar wind, planetary magnetospheres, and in more distant astrophysical systems. A key expected outcome is a set of observation-driven models that connect measured velocity distributions to the growth, damping, and global impact of kinetic-scale fluctuations. 🌟