Characterizing Plasma Turbulence Using Sparse, Multi-point, Multi-scale Measurements

Studying the dynamic interactions of turbulent fluctuations at multiple scales as energy is transported between structures of different sizes is necessary for characterizing this universal phenomena. In preparation for selected (e.g. HelioSwarm) and proposed (e.g. Plasma Observatory) multi-spacecraft missions designed to study the multi-scale nature of turbulence in space plasmas, we extend a number of analysis techniques that have been developed and refined for single-spacecraft or single-scale missions and apply them to synthetic data drawn from numerical simulations of turbulence, using both the Gkyell and Pegasus++ simulation codes. These techniques include magnetic field reconstruction, estimations of spatial gradients, deconvolution of spatial and temporal correlation scales, and determinations of scale-dependent intermittency. The accuracy of these techniques is assessed as a function of the geometry of the inter-spacecraft separations, which provides guidance for the design of multi-spacecraft observatory trajectories.