Enhanced Electron Mixing and Heating in 3D Asymmetric Reconnection at the Earth's Magnetopause
Plasma Physics
2017-04-04 v1 Space Physics
Abstract
Electron heating and mixing during asymmetric reconnection are studied with a 3D kinetic simulation that matches plasma parameters from Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft observations of a magnetopause diffusion region. The mixing and heating are strongly enhanced across the magnetospheric separatrix compared to a 2D simulation. The transport of particles across the separatrix in 3D is attributed to lower-hybrid drift turbulence excited at the steep density gradient near the magnetopause. In the 3D simulation (and not the 2D simulation), the electron temperature parallel to the magnetic field within the mixing layer is significantly higher than its upstream value in agreement with the MMS observations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1703.10246,
title = {Enhanced Electron Mixing and Heating in 3D Asymmetric Reconnection at the Earth's Magnetopause},
author = {Ari Le and William Daughton and Li-Jen Chen and Jan Egedal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.10246},
year = {2017}
}