Related papers: Collisionless reconnection: The sub-microscale mec…
Magnetic reconnection requires the violation of the frozen-in condition which ties gyrating charged particles to the magnetic field inhibiting diffusion. Ongoing reconnection has been identified in near-Earth space as being responsible for…
Microscopically, collisionless reconnection in thin current sheets is argued to involve `composite electrons' in the ion inertial (Hall current) domain, a tiny fraction of electrons only. These `composite electrons' are confined to lower…
Three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamic simulations are carried out to explore magnetic reconnections in the presence of 3D magnetic nulls and quasi-separatrix layers (QSLs). The initial magnetic fields are created by superposing uniform…
The prominence of nulls in reconnection theory is due to the expected singular current density and the indeterminacy of field-lines at a magnetic null. Electron inertia changes the implications of both features. Magnetic field lines are…
A new path for the generation of a sub-ion scale cascade in collisionless plasma turbulence, triggered by magnetic reconnection, is uncovered by means of high-resolution two-dimensional hybrid-kinetic simulations employing two complementary…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous plasma process in which oppositely directed magnetic field lines break and rejoin, resulting in a change of the magnetic field topology. Reconnection generates magnetic islands: regions enclosed by…
Magnetic reconnection is a process that converts magnetic energy into plasma energy by changing the magnetic field line topology. The outstanding question is why the reconnection rate is $\mathcal{O}(0.01 - 0.1)$ in many astrophysical…
A concise review is given on the past two decades' results from laboratory experiments on collisionless magnetic reconnection in direct relation with space measurements, especially by Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. Highlights…
We study the transition between anti-parallel and component collisionless magnetic reconnection with 2D particle-in-cell simulations. The primary finding is that a guide field \approx 0.1 times as strong as the asymptotic reconnecting field…
Magnetic reconnection occurs when two plasmas having co-planar but anti-parallel magnetic fields meet. At the contact point, the field is locally annihilated and the magnetic energy can be released into the surrounding plasma. Theory and…
Null and X-points are not themselves directly important to magnetic reconnection because distinguishable field lines do not approach them closely. Even in a collision-free plasma, magnetic field lines that approach each other on a scale…
Reconnection physics at micro-scales is investigated in an electron magnetohydrodynamics frame. A new process of collapse of the neutral current sheet is demonstrated by means of analytical and numerical solutions. It shows how at scales…
The underlying concepts of collisionless magnetic field reconnection in the vicinity of the diffusion regions are developed qualitatively from first principles. One conclusion of this analysis is that energetic ions and electrons observed…
Fast magnetic reconnection is defined by the topology of the magnetic field lines changing on a timescale that is approximately an order of magnitude longer than the topology-conserving ideal-evolution timescale. Fast reconnection is an…
A prediction of the steady-state reconnection electric field in asymmetric reconnection is obtained by maximizing the reconnection rate as a function of the opening angle made by the upstream magnetic field on the weak magnetic field…
We present two-dimensional kinetic simulations, with a broad range of initial guide fields, that isolate the role of parallel electric fields ($E_\parallel$) in energetic electron production during collisionless magnetic reconnection. In…
The kinetic features of plasmoid chain formation and evolution are investigated by two dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations. Magnetic reconnection is initiated in multiple X points by the tearing instability. Plasmoids form and grow in…
Magnetic fields without a direction of continuous symmetry have the generic feature that neighboring field lines exponentiate away from each other and become stochastic, hence the ideal constraint of preserving magnetic field line…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the properties of magnetic reconnection at a 3D null point, with respect to their dependence on the symmetry of the magnetic field around the null. In particular we examine the rate of flux transport…
Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of collisionless magnetic reconnection are performed to study asymmetric reconnection in which an outflow is blocked by a hard wall while leaving sufficiently large room for the outflow of the opposite…