Charge separation effects in electron-magnetohydrodynamic reconnection

Abstract

Charge separation effects in a strongly magnetized plasma are shown to reduce the rate of magnetic field line reconnection in the whistler frequency range. A system of two eigenmode equations describing the linear growth of the reconnection instability is derived and solved numerically, using the compressible electron-magnetohydrodynamic theory first developed by Kuvshinov et al. [Phys. Lett. A 241, 287 (1998)]. Charge separation introduces a “renormalized skin depth” λe, larger than the electron skin depth de, which results in the broadening of the eigenmode structure.