Analysis of the Energy Flux Density near Electron Diffusion Region of Asymmetric Magnetic Field Reconnection

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is a crucial energy conversion process in plasmas, and it is important to study the forms of energy conversion and their distribution in this process. Previous research has focused mainly on the energy fluxes in symmetric reconnection, while the study of asymmetric reconnection at the Earth’s magnetopause, especially in terms of statistical analysis of multiple events, has not been reported before. Therefore, 10 magnetic reconnection events at the magnetopause observed by MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale) satellite that passed through the electron diffusion region were used for analysis. Although the contribution of different energy flux varies case by case, our results show that in most events, the ion enthalpy flux is dominant, followed by the Poynting flux. The ion heat flux is slightly smaller than the Poynting flux, while the sum of ion kinetic energy flux, electron enthalpy flux and electron heat flux only accounts for less than 10% of the total energy flux. By projecting the normalized energy flux of all events into BL−V(i,L) plane (in LMN coordinate), we find that the energy flux in M direction is comparable to the energy flux in L direction and also there is an “anti-correlated” relationship between the ion velocity and ion heat flux around reconnection diffusion region, consistent with previous studies.