“Island surfing” mechanism of electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection

Oka, M.; Fujimoto, M.; Shinohara, I.; Phan, T. D.

doi:10.1029/2010ja015392

Cited by 75 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…There are different mechanisms accounting for the energization of such electrons. Electrons are thought to be first accelerated by the reconnection electric field at the X-line (Øieroset et al, 2002;Pritchett, 2006;Retinò et al, 2008) and then further accelerated around the Xline within magnetic flux pile-up regions (Hoshino et al, Correspondence to: A. Vaivads (andris@irfu.se) 2001; Imada et al, 2007) and/or magnetic islands (Pritchett, 2008;Retinò et al, 2008;Oka et al, 2010). At larger spatial scales, betatron acceleration is efficient enough to account for the observed fluxes of energetic electrons (Åsnes et al, 2008) as confirmed by recent observations and simulations Ashour-Abdalla et al, 2011), although other studies indicate that the acceleration mechanisms can be more complex (Asano et al, 2010;Retinò et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suprathermal electron acceleration during reconnection onset in the magnetotail

Vaivads

Retinò²,

Khotyaintsev

et al. 2011

Ann. Geophys.

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Abstract. We study one event of reconnection onset associated to a small substorm on 27 September 2006 by using Cluster observations at inter-spacecraft separation of about 10 000 km. We focus on the acceleration of suprathermal electrons during different stages of reconnection. We show that several distinct stages of acceleration occur: (1) moderate acceleration during reconnection of pre-existing plasma sheet flux tubes, (2) stronger acceleration during reconnection of lobe flux tubes, (3) production of the most energetic electrons within dipolarization fronts (magnetic pile-up regions). The strongest acceleration is reached at the location of B z maxima inside the magnetic pile-up region where the reconnection jet stops. Very strong localized dawn-dusk electric field are observed within the magnetic pile-up regions and are associated to most of the magnetic flux transport.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suprathermal electron acceleration during reconnection onset in the magnetotail

Vaivads

Retinò²,

Khotyaintsev

et al. 2011

Ann. Geophys.

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“…Theoretical models and simulations showed how the occurrence of secondary plasmoids affects magnetic reconnection and how fast reconnection in low resistivity plasmas can be achieved in the MHD framework via stochastic magnetic reconnection [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Collisionless Particle-in-Cell simulations [24][25][26][27][28][29] studied the dynamics of plasmoid chain focusing on kinetic effects and acceleration mechanisms in multiple magnetic island magnetic reconnection [30,31]. Previous particle simulation studies used a reduced two dimensional geometry, neglecting current-aligned instabilities developing in the third direction, or modeled pair relativistic plasmas in three dimensions [32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinetic simulations of plasmoid chain dynamics

Markidis¹,

Henri²,

Lapenta³

et al. 2013

Physics of Plasmas

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The dynamics of a plasmoid chain is studied with three dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations.The evolution of the system with and without a uniform guide field, whose strength is 1/3 the asymptotic magnetic field, is investigated. The plasmoid chain forms by spontaneous magnetic reconnection: the tearing instability rapidly disrupts the initial current sheet generating several small-scale plasmoids, that rapidly grow in size coalescing and kinking. The plasmoid kink is mainly driven by the coalescence process. It is found that the presence of guide field strongly influences the evolution of the plasmoid chain. Without a guide field, a main reconnection site dominates and smaller reconnection regions are included in larger ones, leading to an hierarchical structure of the plasmoid-dominated current sheet. On the contrary in presence of a guide field, plasmoids have approximately the same size and the hierarchical structure does not emerge, a strong core magnetic field develops in the center of the plasmoid in the direction of the existing guide field, and bump-on-tail instability, leading to the formation of electron holes, is detected in proximity of the plasmoids. * markidis@pdc.kth.se 2

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“…With the extension of ECS, it is unstable to the tearing instability, which then forms secondary islands. Secondary islands not only can affect reconnection rate (Daughton et al, 2006) and energize electrons effectively (Wang et al, 2010b;Oka et al, 2010), but also they may be related to the bursty nature of reconnection (Drake et al, 2006). Recently, Daughton et al (2011) studied the three-dimensional (3-D) evolution of guide field reconnection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of electron current sheet and formation of secondary islands in guide field reconnection

Huang

Yang

et al. 2011

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract. Two-dimensional (2-D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are performed to investigate the evolution of the electron current sheet (ECS) in guide field reconnection. The ECS is formed by electrons accelerated by the inductive electric field in the vicinity of the X line, which is then extended along the x direction due to the imbalance between the electric field force and Ampere force. The tearing instability is unstable when the ECS becomes sufficiently long and thin, and several seed islands are formed in the ECS. These tiny islands may coalesce and form a larger secondary island in the center of the diffusion region.

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“Island surfing” mechanism of electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection

Cited by 75 publications

References 19 publications

Suprathermal electron acceleration during reconnection onset in the magnetotail

Suprathermal electron acceleration during reconnection onset in the magnetotail

Kinetic simulations of plasmoid chain dynamics

The evolution of electron current sheet and formation of secondary islands in guide field reconnection

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