The nature of the cross-scale connections between the inertial range turbulent energy
cascade and the small-scale kinetic processes in collisionless plasmas is explored through
the analysis of two-dimensional Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell numerical simulation (HVM),
with
α
particles, and through a proxy of the turbulent energy transfer rate, namely the
Local Energy Transfer rate (LET). Correlations between pairs of variables, including
those related to kinetic processes and to deviation from Maxwellian distributions, are
first evidenced. Then, the general properties and the statistical scaling laws of the LET
are described, confirming its reliability for the description of the turbulent cascade and
revealing its textured topology. Finally, the connection between such proxy and the diag-
nostic variables is explored using conditional averaging, showing that several quantities
are enhanced in the presence of large positive energy flux, and reduced near sites of neg-
ative flux. These observations can help determining which processes are involved in the
dissipation of energy at small scales, as for example ion-cyclotron or mirror instabilities
typically associated with perpendicular anisotropy of temperature.