Excitation of whistler mode waves in collisionless magnetic reconnection with a particle-in-cell simulation

Abstract

Adopting a two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation, we present a study on the excitation and propagation of electron whistler waves during magnetic reconnection. Simulating results show that the whistler waves with frequency higher than the lower hybrid frequency are found to occur in the electron outflow region, suggesting that the electron beam arising from magnetic reconnection may excite the electron whistler waves. Furthermore, the propagation of the whistler mode waves is anti-parallel to the beam direction. And the whistler waves do not propagate far away from their sources, which is consistent with the observational data.