Reconnection in Thin Current Sheets and Coherent Dissipation in Intermittent Strong Space Plasma Turbulence

Thin current sheets the size of the order of the ion inertial length exhibiting the signature of local magnetic reconnection are shown to be abundant in an intermittent high-β plasma turbulent environment, in the outer magnetosheath downstream of the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock. The magnetic field turbulent spectra follow a power law scaling f^{-2.1} for large magnetohydrodynamic scales, but show strong intermittency at the ion larmor and ion inertial scales, suggesting that the observed reconnection occurs due to interaction of short scale coherent structures of opposite magnetic polarity. The discovery of reconnecting current sheets in association with intermittency and coherent structures can have important implications for dissipation in turbulent plasmas.