Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection via Alfven Eigenmodes
Plasma Physics
2009-07-07 v1 Space Physics
Abstract
We propose an analytic approach to the problem of collisionless magnetic reconnection formulated as a process of Alfven eigenmodes' generation and dissipation. Alfven eigenmodes are confined by the current sheet in the same way that quantum mechanical waves are confined by the tanh^2 potential. The dynamical time scale of reconnection is the system scale divided by the eigenvalue propagation velocity of the n=1 mode. The prediction of the n=1 mode shows good agreement with the in situ measurement of the reconnection-associated Hall fields.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0907.0794,
title = {Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection via Alfven Eigenmodes},
author = {Lei Dai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.0794},
year = {2009}
}