Reconnection Dynamics in Semi-Collisional Plasmas

Details Reconnection Dynamics in Semi-Collisional Plasmas Reconnection Dynamics in Semi-Collisional Plasmas

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm31a1705d&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM31A-1705

Physics

2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 2788 Magnetic Storms And Substorms (7954), 7526 Magnetic Reconnection (2723, 7835), 7845 Particle Acceleration

Scientific paper

The physics of magnetic reconnection is examined in the semi-collisional regime using fully kinetic particle-in- cell (PIC) simulations in which binary collisions are included by a Monte-Carlo technique [T. Takizuka and H. Abe, J. Comput. Phys., v. 25, p. 205, 1977]. This approach describes a full Fokker-Planck collision operator and thus permits a first-principles study of the transition between collisionless and collisional reconnection. For sufficiently collisional regimes, this approach recovers the well-known Sweet- Parker scaling from resistive MHD. In relatively small systems with neutral sheet geometry, a clear transition to fast reconnection is observed when the thickness of the Sweet-Parker current layer falls below the ion inertial length. In larger systems, the highly elongated Sweet-Parker current layers are unstable to a tearing-like instability leading to an abrupt transition to faster reconnection. Although certain aspects of these results are consistent with expectations from two-fluid theory, there are significant differences in the structure and time dependence within the weakly collisional regime. In particular, there is a basic tendency for the diffusion region to form an elongated current sheet for all collisionality regimes. For large-scale systems, these elongated current layers are unstable to plasmoid formation leading to a time-dependent reconnection process in both the collisionless and semi-collisional parameter regimes.

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