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Ion and electron heating during magnetic reconnection in weakly collisional plasmas

Part of: Focus on Plasma Astrophysics Collisions in Collisionless Plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2014

Ryusuke Numata Open the ORCID record for Ryusuke Numata [Opens in a new window]  and
N. F. Loureiro
Ryusuke Numata*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Simulation Studies, University of Hyogo, 7-1-28 Minatojima Minami-machi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
N. F. Loureiro
Affiliation:
Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

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Magnetic reconnection and associated heating of ions and electrons in strongly magnetized, weakly collisional plasmas are studied by means of gyrokinetic simulations. It is shown that an appreciable amount of the released magnetic energy is dissipated to yield (irreversible) electron and ion heating via phase mixing. Electron heating is mostly localized to the magnetic island, not the current sheet, and occurs after the dynamical reconnection stage. Ion heating is comparable to electron heating only in high-β plasmas, and results from both parallel and perpendicular phase mixing due to finite Larmor radius (FLR) effects; in space, ion heating is mostly localized to the interior of a secondary island (plasmoid) that arises from the instability of the current sheet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , 305810201
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

References

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