How Anomalous Resistivity Accelerates Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

Whether turbulence induced anomalous resistivity (AR) can facilitate a fast magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasma is a subject of active debate for decades. Recent space observations suggest that the reconnection rate can be higher than the Hall-reconnection rate and turbulent dissipation is required. In this paper, using particle-in-cell simulations, we present a case study of how AR produced by Buneman instability accelerates magnetic reconnection. We first show that the AR/drag produced by Buneman instability in a thin electron current layer 1) can dissipate magnetic energy stored in the current layer through dissipation of the kinetic energy of electron beams; 2) The inhomogeneous drag caused by wave couplings spontaneously breaks the magnetic field lines and causes impulsive fast non-Hall magnetic reconnection on electron-scales with a mean rate reaching 0.6 $V_A$. We then show that a Buneman instability driven by intense electron beams around the x-point in a 3D magnetic reconnection significantly enhances the dissipation of the magnetic energy. Electron-scale magnetic reconnections driven by the inhomogeneous drag around the x-line enhances the reconnection electric field and the in-plane perpendicular magnetic field. About 40\% of the released magnetic energy is converted into the electron thermal energy by AR while 50\% is converted into the kinetic energy of the electron beams through the acceleration by the reconnection electric field. The enhanced magnetic energy dissipation is balanced by a net Poynting flux in-flow. About 10\% of the released magnetic energy is brought out by an enhanced Poynting flux out-flow. These results suggest that AR with sufficient intensity and electron-scale inhomogeneity can significantly accelerate magnetic reconnection.

Physics of Plasma accepted

References in corpus (8)

• Physical Origin of the Quadrupole Out-of-Plane Magnetic Field in Hall-MHD Reconnection
• On the Value of the Reconnection Rate
• How Electron Two-Stream Instability Drives Cyclic Langmuir Collapse and Continuous Coherent Emission
• Non-Maxwellian electron distribution functions due to self-generated turbulence in collisionless guide-field reconnection
• Two-Stage Bulk Electron Heating in the Diffusion Region of Anti-Parallel Symmetric Reconnection
• Electron Two-stream Instability and Its Application in Solar and Heliophysics
• Turbulent transport in 2D collisionless guide field reconnection
• Two-Fluid Description of Wave-Particle Interactions in Strong Buneman Turbulence

Cited by in corpus (14)

• How accurately can we measure the reconnection rate $E_M$ for the MMS diffusion region event of 2017-07-11?
• Drift Turbulence, Particle Transport, and Anomalous Dissipation at the Reconnecting Magnetopause
• Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes
• Electron Heating by Debye-Scale Turbulence in Guide-Field Reconnection
• The structure of a perturbed magnetic reconnection electron diffusion region
• Kinetic turbulence in fast 3D collisionless guide-field magnetic reconnection
• Forced magnetic reconnection and plasmoid coalescence: I - MHD Simulations
• The role of noise in PIC and Vlasov simulations of the Buneman instability
• Quantifying the Effect of Non-Larmor Motion of Electrons on the Pressure Tensor
• Particle-in-cell simulation of Buneman instability beyond quasilinear saturation
• Backward waves in the nonlinear regime of the Buneman instability
• Fast magnetic reconnection: The "ideal" tearing instability in classic, Hall, and relativistic plasmas
• Wave emission of non-thermal electron beams generated by magnetic reconnection
• The dynamics of electron holes in current sheets