Physics of collisionless reconnection in a stressed X-point collapse
| dc.creator | Tsiklauri, D. | |
| dc.creator | Haruki, T. | |
| dc.date | 2008-07-21 | |
| dc.date | 2008-09-25 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T10:12:17Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T10:12:17Z | |
| dc.description | Recently, magnetic reconnection during collisionless, stressed, X-point collapse was studied using kinetic, 2.5D, fully electromagnetic, relativistic Particle-in-Cell numerical code [D. Tsiklauri and T. Haruki, Phys. Plasmas, 14, 112905 (2007)]. Here we finalise the investigation of this topic by addressing key outstanding physical questions. It has been established here that: (i) reconnection out-of-plane electric field at the magnetic null is generated by the electron pressure tensor off-diagonal terms, resembling to the case of tearing unstable Harris current sheet studied by the GEM reconnection challenge; (ii) For m_i / m_e >> 1 the time evolution of the reconnected flux is independent of ion-electron mass ratio; also, in the case of m_i / m_e = 1 we show that reconnection proceeds slowly as the Hall term is zero; when m_i / m_e >> 1 (i.e. the Hall term is non-zero) reconnection is fast and we conjecture that this is due to magnetic field being frozen into electron fluid, which moves significantly faster than ion fluid; (iii) within one Alfven time, somewhat less than half (40%) of the initial total (roughly magnetic) energy is converted into the kinetic energy of electrons, and somewhat more than half (60%) into kinetic energy of ions (similar to solar flare observations); (iv) in the strongly stressed X-point case, in about one Alfven time, a full isotropy in all three spatial directions of the velocity distribution is seen for super-thermal electrons (also commensurate to solar flare observations). | |
| dc.description | Final version, accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3252 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3252 | |
| dc.identifier | Phys. of Plasmas, 15, 102902 (2008) | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.1063/1.2999532 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/172136 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.subject | Plasma Physics | |
| dc.subject | Space Physics | |
| dc.title | Physics of collisionless reconnection in a stressed X-point collapse | |
| dc.type | text |