Numerical comparison between a Gyrofluid and Gyrokinetic model investigating collisionless magnetic reconnection

Abstract

The first detailed comparison between gyrokinetic and gyrofluid simulations of collisionless magnetic reconnection has been carried out. Both the linear and nonlinear evolution of the collisionless tearing mode have been analyzed. In the linear regime, we have found a good agreement between the two approaches over the whole spectrum of linearly unstable wave numbers, both in the drift kinetic limit and for finite ion temperature. Nonlinearly, focusing on the small-${\Delta }^{\prime }$ regime, with ${\Delta }^{\prime }$ indicating the standard tearing stability parameter, we have compared relevant observables such as the evolution and saturation of the island width, as well as the island oscillation frequency in the saturated phase.The results are basically the same, with small discrepancies only in the value of the saturated island width for moderately high values of ${\Delta }^{\prime }$. Therefore, in the regimes investigated here, the gyrofluid approach can describe the collisionless reconnection process as well as the more complete gyrokinetic model.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication on Physics of Plasmas

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• "Ideal" tearing and the transition to fast reconnection in the weakly collisional MHD and EMHD regimes
• A Hamiltonian Five-Field Gyrofluid Model
• Influence of ion-to-electron temperature ratio on tearing instability and resulting subion-scale turbulence in a low-${\beta }_e$ collisionless plasma
• Investigation of the collisionless plasmoid instability based on gyrofluid and gyrokinetic integrated approach