Abstract Evidence from magnetospheric and solar flare research supports the belief that collisionless magnetic reconnection can proceed on the Alfven-wave crossing timescale. Reconnection behavior that occurs this rapidly in collisionless plasmas is not well understood because underlying mechanisms depend on the details of the ion and electron distributions in the vicinity of the emerging X-points. We use the direct implicit Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code AVANTI to study the details of these distributions as they evolve in the self-consistent E and B fields of magnetic reconnection. We first consider a new simple neutral sheet model and see reconnection that proceeds much more rapidly than reconnection from the Harris equilibrium. We observe rapid movement of the current-carrying electrons away from the emerging X-point. Later in time an oscillation of the trapped magnetic flux is found, superimposed upon continued linear growth due to plasma inflow at the ion sound speed. The addition of a current-aligned (east-west direction in the magnetosphere) and a normal (north-south in the magnetosphere) B field widen the scope of our studies.
Particle distributions in collisionless magnetic reconnection: An implicit PIC description
Advances in Space Research ; 11 , 9 ; 193-201
1991-01-01
9 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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