The three-dimensional evolution of ion-scale current sheets: tearing and drift-kink instabilities in the presence of proton temperature anisotropy

Abstract

We present the first three-dimensional hybrid simulations of the evolution of ion-scale current sheets, with an investigation of the role of temperature anisotropy and associated kinetic instabilities on the growth of the tearing instability and particle heating. We confirm the ability of the ion cyclotron and firehose instabilities to enhance or suppress reconnection, respectively. The simulations demonstrate the emergence of persistent three-dimensional structures, including patchy reconnection sites and the fast growth of a narrow-band drift-kink instability, which suppresses reconnection for thin current sheets with weak guide fields. Potential observational signatures of the three-dimensional evolution of solar wind current sheets are also discussed. We conclude that kinetic instabilities, arising from non-Maxwellian ion populations, are significant to the evolution of three-dimensional current sheets, and two-dimensional studies of heating rates by reconnection may therefore over-estimate the ability of thin, ion-scale current sheets to heat the solar wind by reconnection.

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Magnetic reconnection as a driver for a sub-ion scale cascade in plasma turbulence
• High-resolution hybrid simulations of kinetic plasma turbulence at proton scales
• Observations of heating along intermittent structures in the inner heliosphere from PSP data
• Fire Hose instability driven by alpha particle temperature anisotropy
• Multiple current sheet systems in the outer heliosphere: Energy release and turbulence
• Free energy sources in current sheets formed in collisionless plasma turbulence
• Particle acceleration in an MHD-scale system of multiple current sheets
• Onset of magnetic reconnection in a collisionless, high-beta plasma
• Automated identification of current sheets -- a new tool to study turbulence and intermittency in the solar wind
• Fast magnetic reconnection: The "ideal" tearing instability in classic, Hall, and relativistic plasmas
• Triggering tearing in a forming current sheet with the mirror instability