Thin Current Sheets and Reconnection Onset in low Beta Plasmas

Details Thin Current Sheets and Reconnection Onset in low Beta Plasmas Thin Current Sheets and Reconnection Onset in low Beta Plasmas

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsm23b0432k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SM23B-0432

Physics

2109 Discontinuities (7811), 2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 7526 Magnetic Reconnection (2723, 7835), 7827 Kinetic And Mhd Theory, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection (2723, 7526)

Scientific paper

Magnetic field line reconnection in the solar wind and in the corona can take place under very low beta conditions. One of the outstanding questions is, whether in these cases reconnection actually initiates in a low beta current sheet. For example, this is not the case in the near-Earth tail, where the cold plasma lobes are separated by a hot plasma sheet. Thus, although the lobes are cold, the configuration is observationally known to be reasonably well described by a conventional Harris equilibrium with a cold background population. In part, the problem of reconnection onset in low beta plasmas has not been extensively studied due to a lack of known, appropriate equilibria. But more importantly, there is little understanding of how thin current sheets develop and evolve in a low beta plasma, the first place. Here, we investigate the formation of thin current sheets and the ensuing evolution of approximate equilibria with one-dimensional and two-dimensional hybrid simulations (electron fluid, kinetic ions). At first, we concentrate on the parameter regime where the ion gyro radius is much smaller than the ion inertial length, but not smaller than the electron inertial length. We will report on methods to use our results in the construction of appropriate full-particle simulations of reconnection onset.

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