2008/08/31 by M. Oka, M. Fujimoto, Takuma Nakamura +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.205004
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.101:205004,2008 · 4 pages; Phys. Rev. Lett., in press
arxiv created 2008/10/24 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Particle-in-cell 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 direction. This condition leads to a slow, roughly constant motion of the diffusion region away from the wall, the so-called "X-line retreat." The typical retreat speed is approximately 0.1 times the Alfvén speed. At the diffusion region, ion flow pattern shows strong asymmetry and the ion stagnation point and the X line are not collocated. A surprise, however, is that the reconnection rate remains the same unaffected by the retreat motion.