Parallel electric fields are inefficient drivers of energetic electrons in magnetic reconnection
Plasma Physics
2016-12-21 v2
Abstract
We present two-dimensional kinetic simulations, with a broad range of initial guide fields, that isolate the role of parallel electric fields () in energetic electron production during collisionless magnetic reconnection. In the strong guide field regime, drives essentially all of the electron energy gain, yet fails to generate an energetic component. We suggest that this is due to the weak energy scaling of particle acceleration from compared to that of a Fermi-type mechanism responsible for energetic electron production in the weak guide-field regime. This result has important implications for energetic electron production in astrophysical systems and reconnection-driven dissipation in turbulence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1607.03857,
title = {Parallel electric fields are inefficient drivers of energetic electrons in magnetic reconnection},
author = {J. T. Dahlin and J. F. Drake and M. Swisdak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.03857},
year = {2016}
}