Influence of the Lower Hybrid Drift Instability on the onset of Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional kinetic simulation results reveal the importance of the Lower-Hybrid Drift Instability LHDI to the onset of magnetic reconnection. Both explicit and implicit kinetic simulations show that the LHDI heats electrons anisotropically and increases the peak current density. Linear theory predicts these modifications can increase the growth rate of the tearing instability by almost two orders of magnitude and shift the fastest growing modes to significantly shorter wavelengths. These predictions are confirmed by nonlinear kinetic simulations in which the growth and coalescence of small scale magnetic islands leads to a rapid onset of large scale reconnection.

References in corpus (2)

• Plasma sheet structure in the magnetotail: kinetic simulation and comparison with satellite observations
• Reconnecting Magnetic Flux Tubes as a Source of In Situ Acceleration in Extragalactic Radio Sources

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Non-linear Waves and Instabilities Leading to Secondary Reconnection in Reconnection Outflows
• Magnetic guide field generation in thin collisionless current sheets
• Energy transport during 3D small-scale reconnection driven by anisotropic plasma turbulence
• The scaling of forced collisionless reconnection in two and three dimensions
• Role of ion acoustic instability in magnetic reconnection