Current sheets and pressure anisotropy in the reconnection exhaust
| dc.contributor.author | Le, A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Egedal, J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ng, Jonathan | |
| dc.contributor.author | Karimabadi, H. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Scudder, J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Roytershteyn, V. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Daughton, W. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Liu, Y.-H. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-07-26T20:02:50Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-07-26T20:02:50Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2014-01-14 | |
| dc.description.abstract | A particle-in-cell simulation shows that the exhaust during anti-parallel reconnection in the collisionless regime contains a current sheet extending 100 inertial lengths from the X line. The current sheet is supported by electron pressure anisotropy near the X line and ion anisotropy farther downstream. Field-aligned electron currents flowing outside the magnetic separatrices feed the exhaust current sheet and generate the out-of-plane, or Hall, magnetic field. Existing models based on different mechanisms for each particle species provide good estimates for the levels of pressure anisotropy. The ion anisotropy, which is strong enough to reach the firehose instability threshold, is also important for overall force balance. It reduces the outflow speed of the plasma. | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | The work of A.L. and H.K.’s was supported by NASA Grant NNH11CC65C. J.E. acknowledges support through NASA Grant NNX10AL11G and NSF Grant Nos. ATM0802380 and OCI 0904734. J.S. acknowledges NSF Grant AGS-1153817 and NASA Grant NNX13AG08G. W.D.’s work was supported by the NASA Heliophysics Theory Program and the LDRD program at Los Alamos. Simulations were performed on Kraken provided by NSF at NICS and on Pleiades provided by NASA’s HEC Program. | en_US |
| dc.description.uri | https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4861871 | en_US |
| dc.format.extent | 10 pages | en_US |
| dc.genre | journal articles | en_US |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.13016/m291zc-femj | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Le, A. et al.; Current sheets and pressure anisotropy in the reconnection exhaust; Physics of Plasmas 21, 012103, 14 January, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4861871 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4861871 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11603/22127 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.publisher | AIP Publishing | en_US |
| dc.relation.isAvailableAt | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute (GPHI) | |
| dc.rights | This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author. | |
| dc.rights | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | * |
| dc.rights | This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law. | |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ | * |
| dc.title | Current sheets and pressure anisotropy in the reconnection exhaust | en_US |
| dc.type | Text | en_US |