Two-Stage Bulk Electron Heating in the Diffusion Region of Anti-Parallel Symmetric Reconnection
arXiv:1609.09508 · doi:10.1063/1.4964768
Abstract
Electron bulk energization in the diffusion region during anti-parallel symmetric reconnection entails two stages. First, the inflowing electrons are adiabatically trapped and energized by an ambipolar parallel electric field. Next, the electrons gain energy from the reconnection electric field as they undergo meandering motion. These collisionless mechanisms have been decribed previously, and they lead to highly-structured electron velocity distributions. Nevertheless, a simplified control-volume analysis gives estimates for how the net effective heating scales with the upstream plasma conditions in agreement with fully kinetic simulations and spacecraft observations.
References in corpus (5)
- The Mechanisms of Electron Heating and Acceleration during Magnetic Reconnection
- Electron Heating During Magnetic Reconnection: A Simulation Scaling Study
- Fast collisionless reconnection and electron heating in strongly magnetized plasmas
- Electron Holes and Heating in the Reconnection Dissipation Region
- Electron acceleration and heating in collisionless magnetic reconnection
Cited by in corpus (6)
- Electron and proton heating in trans-relativistic magnetic reconnection
- On the Role of Separatrix Instabilities in Heating the Reconnection Outflow Region
- How Anomalous Resistivity Accelerates Magnetic Reconnection
- Temperature gradient driven heat flux closure in fluid simulations of collisionless reconnection
- The Force Balance of Electrons During Kinetic Anti-parallel Magnetic Reconnection
- Direct Measurement of Electron Heating in Electron-Only Reconnection in a Laboratory Mini-Magnetosphere