Electron Acceleration during Macroscale Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

The first self-consistent simulations of electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection in a macroscale system are presented. Consistent with solar flare observations the spectra of energetic electrons take the form of power-laws that extend more than two decades in energy. The drive mechanism for these nonthermal electrons is Fermi reflection in growing and merging magnetic flux ropes. A strong guide field is found to suppress the production of nonthermal electrons by weakening the Fermi drive mechanism. For a weak guide field the total energy content of nonthermal electrons dominates that of the hot thermal electrons even though their number density remains small. Our results are benchmarked with the hard x-ray, radio and extreme ultra-violet (EUV) observations of the X8.2-class solar flare on September 10, 2017.

References in corpus (5)

• Formation of Hard Power-laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
• The Mechanisms of Electron Heating and Acceleration during Magnetic Reconnection
• Measurement of magnetic field and relativistic electrons along a solar flare current sheet
• The role of three-dimensional transport in driving enhanced electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection
• Parallel electric fields are inefficient drivers of energetic electrons in magnetic reconnection

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Energetic Electron Distribution of the Coronal Acceleration Region: First results from Joint Microwave and Hard X-ray Imaging Spectroscopy