Related papers: Effective resistivity in relativistic collisionles…
Magnetic reconnection in relativistic collisionless plasmas can accelerate particles and power high-energy emission in various astrophysical systems. Whereas most previous studies focused on relativistic reconnection in pair plasmas, less…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous plasma process that transforms magnetic energy into particle energy during eruptive events throughout the universe. Reconnection not only converts energy during solar flares and geomagnetic substorms…
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…
During magnetically dominated relativistic reconnection, inflowing plasma depletes the initial relativistic pressure at the x-line and collisionless plasma heating inside the diffusion region is insufficient to overcome this loss. The…
We simulate magnetic reconnection in electron-positron (pair) plasma using a collisionless two-fluid model with isotropic pressure. In this model the resistive, Hall, and electrokinetic pressure terms are absent from the curl of Ohm's law,…
Two cases of weakly and strongly stressed X-point collapse were considered. Here descriptors weakly and strongly refer to 20 % and 124 % unidirectional spatial compression of the X-point, respectively. In the weakly stressed case, the…
We present 3D simulations of semirelativistic collisionless magnetic reconnection, where upstream ions are subrelativistic while electrons are ultrarelativistic. We employ the realistic proton-to-electron mass ratio and explore a range of…
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…
Collisionless magnetic reconnection is a prime candidate to account for flare-like or steady emission, outflow launching, or plasma heating, in a variety of high-energy astrophysical objects, including ones with relativistic ion-electron…
Two-dimensional relativistic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of radiative magnetic reconnection in pair plasmas with multiple interacting current sheets are carried out to mimic the dynamics in high-energy astrophysical environments,…
The debate surrounding fast magnetic energy dissipation by magnetic reconnection has remained a fundamental topic in the plasma universe, not only in the Earth's magnetosphere but in astrophysical objects such as pulsar magnetospheres and…
Basic properties of relativistic magnetic reconnection in electron-positron pair plasmas are investigated by using a particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. We first revisit a problem by Hesse & Zenitani (2007), who examined the kinetic Ohm's…
Plasmoid instability is usually accounted for the onset of fast reconnection events observed in astrophysical plasmas. However, the measured reconnection rate from observations can be one order of magnitude higher than that derived from MHD…
Magnetic reconnection is a leading mechanism for dissipating magnetic energy and accelerating nonthermal particles in Poynting-flux dominated flows. In this letter, we investigate nonthermal particle acceleration during magnetic…
Recent progress in understanding the physics of magnetic reconnection is conveniently summarized in terms of a phase diagram which organizes the essential dynamics for a wide variety of applications in heliophysics, laboratory and…
Understanding plasma dynamics and nonthermal particle acceleration in 3D magnetic reconnection has been a long-standing challenge. In this paper, we explore these problems by performing large-scale fully kinetic simulations of multi-xline…
Astrophysical observations suggest that magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas plays an important role in the acceleration of energetic particles. Modeling this accurately requires numerical schemes capable of addressing large scales…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous and fundamental process in plasmas by which magnetic fields change their topology and release magnetic energy. Despite decades of research, the physics governing the reconnection process in many…
Plasmoids, quasi-spherical regions of plasma containing magnetic fields and high-energy particles, are a self-consistent by-product of the reconnection process in the relativistic regime. Recent two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC)…
Magnetic reconnection -- a fundamental plasma physics process, where magnetic field lines of opposite polarity annihilate -- is invoked in astrophysical plasmas as a powerful mechanism of nonthermal particle acceleration, able to explain…