On the Electron Agyrotropy during Rapid Asymmetric Magnetic Island Coalescence in Presence of a Guide Field
arXiv:1608.00725 · doi:10.1002/2016GL070195
Abstract
We present an analysis of the properties of the electron velocity distribution during island coalescence in asymmetric reconnection with and without guide field. In a previous study, three main domains were identified, in the case without guide field, as X-, D- and M-regions featuring different reconnection evolutions {Cazzola et al. 2015). These regions are also identified here in the case with guide field. We study the departure from isotropic and gyrotropic behavior by means of different robust detection algorithms proposed in the literature. While in the case without guide field these metrics show an overall agreement, when the guide field is present a discrepancy in the agyrotropy within some relevant regions is observed, such as at the separatrices and inside magnetic islands. Moreover, in light of the new observations from the Multiscale MagnetoSpheric mission, an analysis of the electron velocity phase-space in these domains is presented.
arXiv commentAccepted for publication in GRL
References in corpus (6)
- Diamagnetic Suppression of Component Magnetic Reconnection at the Magnetopause
- Electron Acceleration by Multi-Island Coalescence
- Quantifying Gyrotropy in Magnetic Reconnection
- Magnetopause expansions for quasi-radial interplanetary magnetic field: THEMIS and Geotail observations
- Pressure balance at the magnetopause: Experimental studies
- Separatrices: the crux of reconnection
Cited by in corpus (6)
- Two-way coupling of magnetohydrodynamic simulations with embedded particle-in-cell simulations
- Particle-in-cell simulations of Alfvén wave parametric decay in a low-beta plasma
- Characterizing magnetic reconnection regions using Gaussian mixture models on particle velocity distributions
- On the ions acceleration via collisionless magnetic reconnection in laboratory plasmas
- Electron inertia and quasi-neutrality in the Weibel instability
- On magnetic reconnection as promising driver for future plasma propulsion systems