Collisionless magnetic reconnection in a plasmoid chain

Abstract

The kinetic features of plasmoid chain formation and evolution are investigated by two dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations. Magnetic reconnection is initiated in multiple X points by the tearing instability. Plasmoids form and grow in size by continuously coalescing. Each chain plasmoid exhibits a strong out-of plane core magnetic field and an out-of-plane electron current that drives the coalescing process. The disappearance of the X points in the coalescence process are due to anti-reconnection, a magnetic reconnection where the plasma inflow and outflow are reversed with respect to the original reconnection flow pattern. Anti-reconnection is characterized by the Hall magnetic field quadrupole signature. Two new kinetic features, not reported by previous studies of plasmoid chain evolution, are here revealed. First, intense electric fields develop in-plane normally to the separatrices and drive the ion dynamics in the plasmoids. Second, several bipolar electric field structures are localized in proximity of the plasmoid chain. The analysis of the electron distribution function and phase space reveals the presence of counter-streaming electron beams, unstable to the two stream instability, and phase space electron holes along the reconnection separatrices.

accepted for publication in special issue "Magnetic reconnection and turbulence in space, laboratory and astrophysical systems" of Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Apar-T: code, validation, and physical interpretation of particle-in-cell results
• Kinetic Simulations of Plasmoid Chain Dynamics
• Generation of turbulence in colliding reconnection jets
• The Dynamic Age of Centaurus A
• Signatures of Secondary Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection Driven by Kink Instability of a Flux Rope
• sputniPIC: an Implicit Particle-in-Cell Code for Multi-GPU Systems
• Formation of collisionless shocks in magnetized plasma interaction with kinetic-scale obstacles