Particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection in three-dimensional force-free plasmas

Details Particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection in three-dimensional force-free plasmas Particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection in three-dimensional force-free plasmas

Dec 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufmsm61a0474g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #SM61A-0474

Physics

7827 Kinetic And Mhd Theory, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection, 7843 Numerical Simulation Studies

Scientific paper

Recent observations and theoretical considerations have pointed to a dynamic intergalactic medium, a sizable part of which is filled with magnetic fields (e.g., Kronberg et al. 2001, ApJ, 560, 178). Magnetic reconnection is an important mechanism of converting magnetic energy into heating and accelerating particles. Astrophysical plasmas often store their magnetic energy in the twists of magnetic fields and with low plasma beta (ratio of thermal to magnetic pressure), in which case it can be assumed that currents flow nearly parallel to the background magnetic field (i.e., force-free). We are investigating the onset of magnetic reconnection in such a plasma using 3-D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. We use a sheet pinch, kinetic equilibrium as an initial force-free configuration (Bobrova et al. 2001, Phys. Plasmas, 8, 759). In our previous 2-D simulations concerning the same problem, we see that the magnetic field configuration has completely changed through magnetic reconnection process. And, the initial magnetic field energy is converted into the flow and thermal energy of particles in the vicinity of X-points. The main purpose of our 3-D simulations is to examine how the physics of magnetic reconnection in force-free plasmas changes when we remove a spatial restriction from 2-D simulations.

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