Strong electron heating and non-Maxwellian behavior in magnetic reconnection

Hoshino, Masahiro; Hiraide, K.; Mukai, T.

doi:10.1186/bf03353282

Cited by 66 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…9) and in simulations (e.g. Hoshino et al, 2001;Pritchett and Coroniti, 2004) that are consistent with the Hall current system. The event studied in this work occurred relatively far away from the X-line, the shear angle was about 114 • and it was associated with a relatively large guide magnetic field.…”

Section: Discussion and Summarymentioning

confidence: 95%

Wind observations of low energy particles within a solar wind reconnection region

2008

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Abstract. We report characteristics of thermal particle observations during the encounter of the Wind satellite with the separatrix and the outflow domains of a reconnection event on 22 July 1999 in the solar wind. During the studied event the electrostatic analyzers on Wind were transmitting threedimensional electron and proton distributions in a burst mode every 3 s, the spin period of the spacecraft. The event was associated with a magnetic shear angle of 114 • and a large guide magnetic field. The observations suggest that Wind crossed the separatrix and outflow regions about a thousand of ion skin depths from the X-line. At the leading separator boundary, a strong proton beam was identified that originated from the direction of the X-line. In the separatrix and the outflow regions, the phase space distributions of thermal electrons displayed field aligned bidirectional anisotropy. During the crossings of the current sheets bounding the outflow region, we identified two adjacent layers in which the dominant thermal electron flows were towards the X-line at the inner edges of the current sheets and away from the X-line at the outer edges. Interestingly, simulation studies and observations in the Earth's magnetosphere have revealed that the electron flows are reversed, consistent with the Hall current system.

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Section: Discussion and Summarymentioning

confidence: 95%

Wind observations of low energy particles within a solar wind reconnection region

2008

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“…Despite kinetic numerical simulations and theoretical work [2][3][4], it remains unclear precisely how magnetic energy is converted to particle kinetic energy during collisionless reconnection and how the conversion process depends on the plasma conditions. Analysis of spacecraft data collected in Earth's magneto-tail [5] and a laboratory reconnection experiment [6] suggest that ∼ 10 − 20% of the magnetic energy released by reconnection is carried by the bulk electrons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two-stage bulk electron heating in the diffusion region of anti-parallel symmetric reconnection

2016

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Electron bulk energization in the diffusion region during anti-parallel symmetric reconnection entails two stages. First, the inflowing electrons are adiabatically trapped and energized by an ambipolar parallel electric field. Next, the electrons gain energy from the reconnection electric field as they undergo meandering motion. These collisionless mechanisms have been decribed previously, and they lead to highly-structured electron velocity distributions. Nevertheless, a simplified controlvolume analysis gives estimates for how the net effective heating scales with the upstream plasma conditions in agreement with fully kinetic simulations and spacecraft observations.

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“…Electron heating by reconnection in the non-relativistic limit (σ i 1) has been studied extensively, both theoretically and by means of PIC simulations, in the context of the solar wind, Earth's magnetotail, and laboratory plasmas (Hoshino et al 2001;Jaroschek et al 2004;Loureiro et al 2013;Schoeffler et al 2011Schoeffler et al , 2013Shay et al 2014;Dahlin et al 2014;Daughton et al 2014;Li et al 2015;Haggerty et al 2015;Numata & Loureiro 2015;Le et al 2016;Li et al 2017). Though less commonly studied, relativistic reconnection (i.e., σ i 1) in electron-proton plasmas has also received some attention in recent years Guo et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electron and Proton Heating in Transrelativistic Magnetic Reconnection

Rowan

Sironi

Narayan

2017

ApJ

131

134

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Hot collisionless accretion flows, such as the one in Sgr A * at our Galactic center, provide a unique setting for the investigation of magnetic reconnection. Here, protons are non-relativistic while electrons can be ultra-relativistic. By means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate electron and proton heating in the outflows of trans-relativistic reconnection (i.e., σ w ∼ 0.1 − 1, where the magnetization σ w is the ratio of magnetic energy density to enthalpy density). For both electrons and protons, we find that heating at high β i (here, β i is the ratio of proton thermal pressure to magnetic pressure) is dominated by adiabatic compression ("adiabatic heating"), while at low β i it is accompanied by a genuine increase in entropy ("irreversible heating"). For our fiducial σ w = 0.1, the irreversible heating efficiency at β i 1 is nearly independent of the electron-to-proton temperature ratio T e /T i (which we vary from 0.1 up to 1), and it asymptotes to ∼ 2% of the inflowing magnetic energy in the low-β i limit. Protons are heated more efficiently than electrons at low and moderate β i (by a factor of ∼ 7), whereas the electron and proton heating efficiencies become comparable at β i ∼ 2 if T e /T i = 1, when both species start already relativistically hot. We find comparable heating efficiencies between the two species also in the limit of relativistic reconnection (σ w 1). Our results have important implications for the two-temperature nature of collisionless accretion flows, and may provide the sub-grid physics needed in general relativistic MHD simulations.

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Strong electron heating and non-Maxwellian behavior in magnetic reconnection

Cited by 66 publications

References 26 publications

Wind observations of low energy particles within a solar wind reconnection region

Wind observations of low energy particles within a solar wind reconnection region

Two-stage bulk electron heating in the diffusion region of anti-parallel symmetric reconnection

Electron and Proton Heating in Transrelativistic Magnetic Reconnection

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