Publications (16)
Kinetic Simulations Verifying Reconnection Rates Measured in the Laboratory, Spanning the Ion-Coupled to Near Electron-Only Regimes
Samuel Greess, Jan Egedal, Adam Stanier +6
The rate of reconnection characterizes how quickly flux and mass can move into and out of the reconnection region. In the Terrestrial Reconnection EXperiment (TREX), the rate at wh…
Hybrid Paricle-in-Cell Simulations of Electromagnetic Coupling and Waves From Streaming Burst Debris
Brett D. Keenan, Ari Le, Dan Winske +4
Various systems can be modeled as a point-like explosion of ionized debris into a magnetized, collisionless background plasma -- including astrophysical examples, active experiment…
Astrophysical explosions revisited: collisionless coupling of debris to magnetized plasma
Ari Le, Dan Winske, Adam Stanier +4
The coupling between a rapidly expanding cloud of ionized debris and an ambient magnetized plasma is revisited with a hybrid (kinetic ion/fluid electron) simulation code that allow…
The island coalescence problem: scaling of reconnection in extended fluid models including higher-order moments
Jonathan Ng, Yi-Min Huang, Ammar Hakim +5
As modeling of collisionless magnetic reconnection in most space plasmas with realistic parameters is beyond the capability of today's simulations, due to the separation between gl…
Hybrid codes (massless electron fluid)
D. Winske, Homa Karimabadi, Ari Le +3
Hybrid codes are widely used to model ion-scale phenomena in space plasmas. Hybrid codes differ from full particle (PIC) codes in that the electrons are modeled as a fluid that is…
Earth's Alfvén wings driven by the April 2023 Coronal Mass Ejection
Li-Jen Chen, Daniel Gershman, Brandon Burkholder +33
We report a rare regime of Earth's magnetosphere interaction with sub-Alfvénic solar wind in which the windsock-like magnetosphere transforms into one with Alfvén wings. In the m…
Direct measurement of non-thermal electron acceleration from magnetically driven reconnection in a laboratory plasma
Abraham Chien, Lan Gao, Shu Zhang +24
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous astrophysical process that rapidly converts magnetic energy into some combination of plasma flow energy, thermal energy, and non-thermal energ…
Wavelet Methods for Studying the Onset of Strong Plasma Turbulence
Ari Le, Vadim Roytershteyn, Homa Karimabadi +3
Wavelet basis functions are a natural tool for analyzing turbulent flows containing localized coherent structures of different spatial scales. Here, wavelets are used to study the…
Magnetic reconnection in the era of exascale computing and multiscale experiments
Hantao Ji, William Daughton, Jonathan Jara-Almonte +3
Astrophysical plasmas have the remarkable ability to preserve magnetic topology, which inevitably gives rise to the accumulation of magnetic energy within stressed regions includin…
Plasma Energization in Colliding Magnetic Flux Ropes
Senbei Du, Fan Guo, Gary P. Zank +2
Magnetic flux ropes are commonly observed throughout the heliosphere, and recent studies suggest that interacting flux ropes are associated with some energetic particle events. In…
Intermittent Electron-Only Reconnection at Lunar Mini-Magnetospheres
Adam Stanier, Li-Jen Chen, Ari Le +2
Lunar crustal magnetic anomalies (LCMA) are sub-ion-gyroradius structures that have been shown to stand off the solar wind (SW) plasma from the Moon's surface, forming shock-like d…
A drift kinetic model for the expander region of a magnetic mirror
Blake A. Wetherton, Ari Le, Jan Egedal +4
We present a drift kinetic model for the free expansion of a thermal plasma out of a magnetic nozzle. This problem relates to plasma space propulsion systems, natural environments…
Formation of Power-law Electron Energy Spectra in Three-dimensional Low- Magnetic Reconnection
Xiaocan Li, Fan Guo, Hui Li +2
While observations have suggested that power-law electron energy spectra are a common outcome of strong energy release during magnetic reconnection, e.g., in solar flares, kinetic…
Hybrid-VPIC: an Open-Source Kinetic/Fluid Hybrid Particle-in-Cell Code
Ari Le, Adam Stanier, Lin Yin +3
Hybrid-VPIC is an extension of the open-source high-performance particle-in-cell (PIC) code VPIC incorporating hybrid kinetic ion/fluid electron solvers. This paper describes the m…
Three-Dimensional Stability of Current Sheets Supported by Electron Pressure Anisotropy
Ari Le, Adam Stanier, Bill Daughton +4
The stability of electron current sheets embedded within the reconnection exhaust is studied with a 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulation. The electron current layers studie…
Effects of Multi-scale Coupling on Particle Acceleration and Energy Partition in Magnetic Reconnection
Alexander Velberg, Adam Stanier, Xiaocan Li +3
The interplay between kinetic and macroscopic scales during magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic island coalescence in the strongly-…