New Measure of the Dissipation Region in Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection

2011/04/30 by Seiji Zenitani, Michael Hesse, Alex Klimas +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.106.195003

published as Physical Review Letters 106, 195003 (2011)

arxiv created 2011/05/11 · arxiv updated 2011/05/12

Abstract

A new measure to identify a small-scale dissipation region in collisionless magnetic reconnection is proposed. The energy transfer from the electromagnetic field to plasmas in the electron's rest frame is formulated as a Lorentz-invariant scalar quantity. The measure is tested by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations in typical configurations: symmetric and asymmetric reconnection, with and without the guide field. The innermost region surrounding the reconnection site is accurately located in all cases. We further discuss implications for nonideal MHD dissipation.

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