Possibility of Quasi-steady Reconnection in Collisionless Plasma: “Petschek” Solution?

Details Possibility of Quasi-steady Reconnection in Collisionless Plasma: “Petschek” Solution? Possibility of Quasi-steady Reconnection in Collisionless Plasma: “Petschek” Solution?

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm21a1560s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM21A-1560

Physics

[2723] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [2724] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, [2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [2753] Magnetospheric Physics / Numerical Modeling

Scientific paper

Many discussions of reconnection in space, solar and astrophysics remain centered on the classical works of Sweet-Parker and Petschek from the 1950s and early 1960s. Central to these models is the assumption of steady-state. However, our recent full particle simulations with collisions have demonstrated that the Sweet-Parker solutions are unstable at high Reynolds numbers [Daughton et al., 2009] and lead to periodic formation of secondary islands. Similarly, collisionless reconnection simulations have revealed formation of elongated electron layers that are susceptible to formation of secondary islands, leading to time-dependent reconnection. These results have raised the question of whether it is possible to achieve quasi-steady reconnection. This issue remains highly contentious both in the collisional and collisionless limits. Here we demonstrate the possibility of quasi-steady solutions and demonstrate that their formation is related to the global boundary conditions. Details of the shock-like boundary confining the reconnection region are discussed. This boundary and the overall structure are quite different than in the Petschek model. The nature of electron and ion dissipation across the “shock” layer is highlighted and a model for the electron heating is proposed. The possibility of detection of these solutions in the data is discussed.

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