Modeling electron acceleration during the contraction of a magnetic island

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection releases the magnetic energy through the contraction of multi-magnetic island leading to the electron acceleration as proposed by Drake et. al in 2006. However, how the released magnetic energy is converted into electron’s kinetic energy is still theoretically not well understood. We model in particular the kinetic process assuming the adiabatic contraction of magnetic island that induces electric field which is proportional to the vector potential of the magnetic island and approximate the magnetic island with an ellipse. Under this model, we show that the energy gain is achieved through the work of inductive electric field. We further show that the curvature drift which is along the inductive electric field dominates the energy gain. We compared our model with the magnetic island formed by tearing instability in a 2.5D particle-in-cell simulation of magnetic reconnection and found the results from the model consistent with that of the simulation.