Basic Physical Mechanism of Fast Reconnection Evolution in Space Plasmas

Abstract

Large dissipative events, such as solar flares and geomagnetic substorms, may result from sudden onset of fast (explosive) magnetic reconnection. Hence, it is a long-standing problem to find the physical mechanism that makes magnetic reconnection explosive; in particular, how can the fast magnetic reconnection explosively evolve in space plasmas? In this respect, we have proposed the spontaneous fast reconnection model as a nonlinear instability that grows by the positive feedback between plasma microphysics (anomalous resistivity) and macrophysics (global reconnection flow). On the basis of MHD simulations, we demonstrate for a variety of physical situations that the fast reconnection mechanism involving slow shocks in fact evolves explosively as a nonlinear instability and is sustained quasi-steadily on the nonlinear saturation phase. Also, distinct plasma processes, such as large-scale plasmoid propagation, magnetic loop development and loop-top heating, and asymmetric fast reconnection evolution, directly result from the spontaneous fast reconnection model. Obviously, MHD simulations are very useful in understanding the basic physics of explosive fast reconnection evolution in space plasmas. However, they cannot treat the details of microphysics near an X neutral point, which should be precisely studied in the coming 21st century.