Scaling of Collisionless Forced Reconnection

Wang, Xiaogang; Bhattacharjee, A.; W., Z.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.87.265003

Cited by 103 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Nevertheless, it was shown later that the boundary conditions could be important, in some cases even dominant, in reconnection processes and the merging speed V rec under an asymptotic boundary perturbation could be as slow as a few percents of V A , or even slower [19,21,22]. Furthermore, a reconnecting speed of 0.02V A as predicted in [19] was reported in a Polar satellite observation at a subsolar magnetopause crossing [29].…”

Section: The Fast Reconnection Ratementioning

confidence: 92%

“…Analytical and numerical advances in collisionless magnetic reconnection based on Hall MHD and other similar models such as the hybrid model [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] have been largely driven by satellite observations in the last decade [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. We in this paper review these developments and discuss outstanding issues raised by satellite observations and to be answered by theory and simulation.…”

Section: / 4πmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recent progresses in theoretical studies and satellite observations for collisionless magnetic reconnection

Wang

Xiao

et al. 2012

Chin. Sci. Bull.

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As an essential mechanism in large scale fast magnetic energy releases and field reconfigurations processes in space, astrophysical, and laboratory plasmas, magnetic reconnection, particularly collisionless magnetic reconnection, has been studied for more than 65 years. Many progresses have been achieved in recent years and basic features of the process have been well understood, largely due to more and more satellite observation data available in the last decade. However, a few outstanding issues are still remained unresolved. We in the paper review the development of collisionless magnetic reconnection studies and major achievements in recent years, and also briefly discuss the open questions remained to be answered in studies of collisionless magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is thought an essential mechanism in many plasma physics processes in space, laboratory, and astrophysical objects, related to configurations relaxation and fast release of magnetic field and energy, observed in laboratory experiments and satellites observations and studied in numerical simulations and theoretical analysis [1]. The concept of magnetic reconnection was first proposed as a process of oppositely directed magnetic field lines merging and annihilated at a magnetic null, in an effort to understand the solar flare phenomenon It has then become a fundamental model in magnetic reconnection studies. Nevertheless, the Sweet-Parker reconnection rate is on the order of square root of the electrical resistivity. Due to the low collisionality in space and solar plasmas, the rate is too slow to be counted for fast events such as solar flares.Another model was then proposed by Petschek, with a fast driven and an X-point geometry, to solve the problem [5]. It was claimed in the Petschek model that a fast reconnection rate could be almost on the order of logarithm of resistivity, much faster than the Sweet-Parker rate. It was however found latterly that in high resolution simulations, the X-point geometry could not be realized in high Lundquist number regime of S≥10 4 [6]. And in the low Lundquist number regime (S<10 3 ), Petschek reconnection rate and Sweet-Parker reconnection rate would be more or less on the same order. On the other hand, collisionless mechanisms such as the finite Larmor radius (FLR) effect rather than collisional

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Section: The Fast Reconnection Ratementioning

confidence: 92%

Section: / 4πmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent progresses in theoretical studies and satellite observations for collisionless magnetic reconnection

Wang

Xiao

et al. 2012

Chin. Sci. Bull.

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“…In addition, the Hall reconnection rate is independent of the magnitude of the electron mass Hesse et al, 1999;Pritchett, 2001;Ricci et al, 2002) and the system size (Shay et al, 1999;Huba and Rudakov, 2004). The dependence on the electron dissipation and the system size seems to be found in studies of forced reconnection and double tearing mode reconnection (Grasso et al, 1999;Wang et al, 2001;Porcelli et al, 2002;Bhattacharjee et al, 2005). Summarizing, the results obtained by all types of numerical simulations, the essential feature of fast reconnection is the presence of the Hall effect, which provides the rate of the steady-state reconnection to be approximately a constant of the order of 0.1.…”

Section: Fast Reconnectionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Collisionless magnetic reconnection: analytical model and PIC simulation comparison

et al. 2009

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Abstract. Magnetic reconnection is believed to be responsible for various explosive processes in the space plasma including magnetospheric substorms. The Hall effect is proved to play a key role in the reconnection process. An analytical model of steady-state magnetic reconnection in a collisionless incompressible plasma is developed using the electron Hall MHD approximation. It is shown that the initial complicated system of equations may split into a system of independent equations, and the solution of the problem is based on the Grad-Shafranov equation for the magnetic potential. The results of the analytical study are further compared with a two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation of reconnection. It is shown that both methods demonstrate a close agreement in the electron current and the magnetic and electric field structures obtained. The spatial scales of the acceleration region in the simulation and the analytical study are of the same order. Such features like particles trajectories and the in-plane electric field structure appear essentially similar in both models.

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“…Both 3D and 2D geometries with various imposed symmetries have been investigated. And while fully three dimensional reconnection remains poorly defined, there is now general agreement on what the basic structure of two dimensional reconnection should be [5,6,7,8,9,10]. Localization of the reconnection region [10], achieved in magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) by including collisionless effects in the Ohm's law, seems to be responsible for the observed fast reconnection rates in the collisionless regime [5,6,7,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there is still a large gap in our understanding of even 2D magnetic reconnection, as most of the numerical studies [1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9] remain unrelated to the experimental effort dedicated to reproducing and describing reconnection in the laboratory setting [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. It is easily observed by comparing the results of numerical studies cited above, that initial and boundary conditions applied to the problem greatly influence the time-evolution of the structure of the reconnection region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hall MHD Modeling of Two-dimensional Reconnection: Application to MRX Experiment

Lukin¹,

Jardin²

2003

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A two-dimensional resistive Hall magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) code is used to investigate the dynamical evolution of driven reconnection in the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX). The initial conditions and dimensionless parameters of the simulation are set to be similar to the experimental values. We successfully reproduce many features of the timeevolution of magnetic configurations for both co-and counter-helicity reconnection in MRX. The Hall effect is shown to be important during the early dynamic X-phase of MRX reconnection, while effectively negligible during the late "steady-state" Y-phase, when plasma heating takes place. Based on simple symmetry considerations, an experiment to directly measure the Hall effect in MRX configuration is proposed and numerical evidence for the expected outcome is given.

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Scaling of Collisionless Forced Reconnection

Cited by 103 publications

References 27 publications

Recent progresses in theoretical studies and satellite observations for collisionless magnetic reconnection

Recent progresses in theoretical studies and satellite observations for collisionless magnetic reconnection

Collisionless magnetic reconnection: analytical model and PIC simulation comparison

Hall MHD Modeling of Two-dimensional Reconnection: Application to MRX Experiment

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