Investigating energy conversion at the electron scales in Earth's magnetotail

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process that converts electromagnetic energy into bulk kinetic and thermal energy of the plasma through topological rearrangement of the magnetic field. This process is often accompanied by kinetic instabilities and wave activity, which can influence energy conversion. The electron firehose instability (EFI) is one such kinetic instability, which arises when the electron population has significant temperature anisotropy, and the parallel component of the temperature sufficiently exceeds the perpendicular component relative to the background magnetic field. The plasma in the reconnection outflow region can be unstable to the EFI and the presence of EFI-generated waves could potentially modify the energy distribution in the plasma.We use data from the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission in Earth's magnetotail to investigate energy conversion associated with magnetic reconnection in different regions, including the Electron Diffusion Region (EDR) and the reconnection outflow hosting EFI-generated waves. To quantify energy conversion, we analyze various measures such as J.E (where J is the current density and E is the electric field), pressure-strain interaction, and the Higher-ORrder Non-Equilibrium Terms (HORNET) power density.