Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection in a Three-Dimensional Open System

Physics

Scientific paper

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2744 Magnetotail, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection, 7843 Numerical Simulation Studies

Scientific paper

The conversion of energy stored in stressed magnetic fields into high speed plasma flows and thermal energy via magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process that occurs in many plasma systems possessing magnetic shear. The 2-D GEM reconnection challenge simulations have greatly clarified the microphysics by which inflowing electrons and ions decouple from the magnetic field in the diffusion region and then flow away from the neutral line along with the reconnected magnetic flux. The dynamics in the diffusion region is dominated by Hall physics, and the region is characterized by a quadrupole out-of-plane magnetic field and a very thin ( ~ c/ω pe) electron dominated current layer. The present work explores the effects of the third dimension (along the direction of the equilibrium current) and of an open geometry along the magnetic field direction on these 2-D structures within a fully kinetic treatment based on particle-in-cell simulations. The thin electron current layer is found to remain a 2-D structure. The electric field components Ez and E∥ in the diffusion region each possess a complex structure on the c/ω pi and c/ω pe spatial scales. The Ez fields are needed to maintain pressure balance for the ion and electron species in the current sheet, while E∥ results in nearly Alfvénic (for the ions) and supra-Alfvénic (for the electrons) flows out of the diffusion region. No evidence is found for the development of significant small scale turbulence; the electron and ion flows are highly ballistic, and the currents and density remain sharply defined. The outflow region, however, can become unstable to an ideal pressure-gradient or kink instability of relatively long wavelength.

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