Reconnection Regime Research Articles

Accessing a new regime of reconnection

Experiments characterize strongly radiatively cooled magnetic reconnection, a process that occurs in the plasma of many astrophysical objects.

A numerical study of electron-magnetohydrodynamics tearing modes in parameter ranges of experimental interest

We perform a numerical study of the linear dynamics of tearing modes in slab incompressible electron-magnetohydrodynamics (EMHD) by considering some parameter ranges, which can be of interest for laboratory plasmas (e.g., helicon devices) or for astrophysics (e.g., solar-wind turbulence). To this purpose, several non-ideal effects are simultaneously retained (finite electron inertia, resistivity, and electron viscosity), and we make distinction between the dissipation coefficients in the direction parallel and perpendicular to the guide field. We thus identify some new reconnection regimes, characterized by a departure from the customary monotonic power-law scalings of the growth rates with respect to the non-ideal parameters. The results here presented can provide a useful indication for future studies of EMHD regimes relevant to experiments and for extensions of the EMHD tearing mode modeling to more complete regimes including kinetic effects (e.g., “electron-only” reconnection in kinetic regimes).

Three‐Dimensional Particle‐In‐Cell Simulations of Electron‐Only Magnetic Reconnection Between Laser‐Produced Plasma Bubbles

AbstractElectron‐only magnetic reconnection, a novel type of reconnection where only electron dynamics is involved, has recently been observed in turbulent plasmas in the Earth's magnetosphere. In this letter, using particle‐in‐cell simulations, we demonstrate that electron‐only reconnection can be created via laser‐plasma interactions. The reconnection current sheet is carried by electrons, and its width is at the electron inertial scale. Moreover, only electron outflow is observed, while the ion outflow is negligible. The duration of the reconnection is found to be within the electron scale, thus there is no sufficient time for ions to respond. The energy conversion during electron‐only reconnection mainly occurs in the vicinity of the X‐line, and is dominated along the perpendicular direction. By analyzing the Poynting flux patterns, we find that the reconnection electric field dominates the whole energy conversion. This study advances our knowledge of the energy dissipation mechanism in the electron‐only reconnection regime.

High-Cadence Observations of Magnetic Field Dynamics and Photospheric Emission Sources in the Eruptive Near-the-Limb X4.9 Solar Flare on 25 February, 2014: Evidences for Two-Stage Magnetic Reconnection during the Impulsive Phase

—We present an analysis of the pre-limb eruptive X4.9 solar flare on February 25, 2014, by means of which we confirm a hypothesis of the two-stage energy release corresponding to two magnetic reconnection regimes in the flare impulsive phase. This flare is selected, firstly, because of its morphological peculiarities suggesting the presence of the two energy release stages. Secondly, the flare was very suitably located near the solar limb and it was well-observed by many instruments. We performed an analysis of multiwavelength observational data of this flare region to find a connection between changes of the photospheric magnetic field, morphology of hard and soft X-ray sources, dynamics of the photospheric optical emission sources, metric radio bursts, and kinematics of an eruptive structure. The simultaneous usage of the line-of-sight and vector Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) magnetograms allowed us to trace magnetic field changes during the flare impulsive phase with high temporal resolution. HMI filtergrams allowed to trace displacement of the photospheric emission sources, associated with the magnetic reconnection, with very high temporal resolution up to 2 s. Using all observational results, we argue that the found flare stages are characterized by the following magnetic reconnection regimes. The first stage is predominantly characterized by the three-dimensional zipping reconnection in the strong sheared magnetic field assuming the tether-cutting geometry. The second stage corresponds to the so-called “standard” model of eruptive flares with the quasi-two-dimensional reconnection below the eruptive flux-rope. All observational peculiarities of these two stages are discussed in details.

Asymptotic scalings of fluid, incompressible “electron-only” reconnection instabilities: Electron-magnetohydrodynamics tearing modes

We perform a numerical study of the scaling laws of tearing modes in different parameter regimes of incompressible fluid electron magnetohydrodynamics, both in the small and large wavelength limits, as well as for the fastest growing mode that can be destabilized in a large aspect ratio current sheet. We discuss the relevance of these results, also for the interpretation of the “electron-only reconnection regime,” recently identified in spacecraft measures and in numerical simulations of solar wind turbulence. We restrict here to a single parameter study, in which we selectively consider only one non-ideal effect among electron inertia, perpendicular resistivity, and perpendicular electron viscosity, and we also consider the cases in which a proportionality exists between the parallel and the perpendicular dissipative coefficients. While some known theoretical results are thus confirmed, in other regimes and/or wavelength limits, corrections are proposed with respect to some theoretical estimates already available in the literature. In other cases, the scalings are provided for the first time. All numerical results are justified in terms of heuristic arguments based on the measurement of the scaling laws of some new microscopic scales associated with the gradients of the eigenfunctions. The alternative scalings we have found are consistent with this interpretation.

Distribution of Negative J·E′ in the Inflow Edge of the Inner Electron Diffusion Region During Tail Magnetic Reconnection: Simulations Vs. Observations

AbstractMagnetic reconnection is a universal phenomenon existing in the space. Energy conversion is one of the essential parts of reconnection discussed for decades. Positive energy conversion (J·E′ > 0) is usually regarded as the sign of electron diffusion region (EDR), while the negative one (J·E′ < 0) turns out to gather in the outer EDR. Here we report the negative J·E′ appearing in the inflow edge of the inner EDR, based on Magnetospheric Multiscale mission observations and particle‐in‐cell simulations. Both observations and simulations verify that this negative J·E′ is mainly contributed from the electron pressure tensor term in generalized Ohm's law. The energy loss of electrons plays the dominant effect in the electron pressure tensor, and this energy decline is caused by the electric field which is induced by the decreasing magnetic field. Our results provide significant insights to expand the understanding of the reconnection regimes.

Physical Regimes of Two-dimensional MHD Turbulent Reconnection in Different Lundquist Numbers

Abstract Using two-dimensional MHD simulations in different Lundquist numbers S, we investigate physical regimes of turbulent reconnection and the role of turbulence in enhancing the reconnection rate. Turbulence is externally injected into the system with varying strength. Externally driven turbulence contributes to the conversion of magnetic energy to kinetic energy flowing out of the reconnection site and thus enhances the reconnection rate. The plasmoids formed in high Lundquist numbers contribute to the fast reconnection rate, as well. Moreover, an analysis of the power of turbulence implies its possible association with the generation of plasmoids. Additionally, the presence of turbulence has great impact on the magnetic energy conversion and may be impactful also for the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability in the magnetic reconnection process.

3D Reconnection Geometries With Magnetic Nulls: Multispacecraft Observations and Reconstructions

AbstractMagnetic reconnection is universal in various plasma environments like the solar atmosphere, planetary magnetosphere, and laboratory to trigger explosive phenomena. Its nature and magnetic structure in two dimensions (2D) have been abundantly analyzed. The three‐dimensional (3D) characteristics of reconnection are different from 2D, and the mysteries of its 3D geometry are under exploration. A critical character in 3D is the presence of magnetic nulls, which is essential when the magnetic field topology is changing. The four identical spacecraft from the Cluster mission enable several methods for analyzing and visualizing the 3D nature of the magnetic structure. In this paper, we focus on reviewing the magnetic topology of the reconnection geometry containing 3D magnetic null points. Applying the fitting‐reconstruction method to Cluster data, magnetic null pairs or multiple magnetic nulls linked by separators or helically wrapped spines are found in the reconnection diffusion region and turbulent outflow region. The reconstructed magnetic structures show that the 2D features are parts of local approximations of the 3D geometries. The 2D regimes of antiparallel and component reconnection can simultaneously occur in 3D separator reconnection. The flux ropes are formed along the spine line or in a region enclosed by wrapped fan surfaces in the presence of spiral null points.

Reconnection-Controlled Decay of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence and the Role of Invariants

We present a new theoretical picture of magnetically dominated, decaying turbulence in the absence of a mean magnetic field. We demonstrate that such turbulence is governed by the reconnection of magnetic structures, and not by ideal dynamics, as has previously been assumed. We obtain predictions for the magnetic-energy decay laws by proposing that turbulence decays on reconnection timescales, while respecting the conservation of certain integral invariants representing topological constraints satisfied by the reconnecting magnetic field. As is well known, the magnetic helicity is such an invariant for initially helical field configurations, but does not constrain non-helical decay, where the volume-averaged magnetic-helicity density vanishes. For such a decay, we propose a new integral invariant, analogous to the Loitsyansky and Saffman invariants of hydrodynamic turbulence, that expresses the conservation of the random (scaling as $\mathrm{volume}^{1/2}$) magnetic helicity contained in any sufficiently large volume. Our treatment leads to novel predictions for the magnetic-energy decay laws: in particular, while we expect the canonical $t^{-2/3}$ power law for helical turbulence when reconnection is fast (i.e., plasmoid-dominated or stochastic), we find a shallower $t^{-4/7}$ decay in the slow `Sweet-Parker' reconnection regime, in better agreement with existing numerical simulations. For non-helical fields, for which there currently exists no definitive theory, we predict power laws of $t^{-10/9}$ and $t^{-20/17}$ in the fast- and slow-reconnection regimes, respectively. We formulate a general principle of decay of turbulent systems subject to conservation of Saffman-like invariants, and propose how it may be applied to MHD turbulence with a strong mean magnetic field and to isotropic MHD turbulence with initial equipartition between the magnetic and kinetic energies.

On the impact of the numerical method on magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration – I. The MHD case

ABSTRACT We present 2D magnetohydrodynamics numerical simulations of tearing-unstable current sheets coupled to a population of non-thermal test particles, in order to address the problem of numerical convergence with respect to grid resolution, numerical method, and physical resistivity. Numerical simulations are performed with the pluto code for astrophysical fluid dynamics through different combinations of Riemann solvers, reconstruction methods, and grid resolutions at various Lundquist numbers. The constrained transport method is employed to control the divergence-free condition of magnetic field. Our results indicate that the reconnection rate of the background tearing-unstable plasma converges only for finite values of the Lundquist number and for sufficiently large grid resolutions. In general, it is found that (for a second-order scheme) the minimum threshold for numerical convergence during the linear phases requires the number of computational zones covering the initial current sheet width to scale roughly as $\sim \sqrt{\bar{S}}$, where $\bar{S}$ is the Lundquist number defined on the current sheet width. On the other hand, the process of particle acceleration is found to be nearly independent of the underlying numerical details inasmuch as the system becomes tearing-unstable and enters in its non-linear stages. In the limit of large $\bar{S}$, the ensuing power-law index quickly converge to p ≈ 1.7, consistently with the fast reconnection regime.

Quasi-Periodic Pulsations in Solar and Stellar Flares: A Review of Underpinning Physical Mechanisms and Their Predicted Observational Signatures

The phenomenon of quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar and stellar flares has been known for over 50 years and significant progress has been made in this research area. It has become clear that QPPs are not rare—they are found in many flares and, therefore, robust flare models should reproduce their properties in a natural way. At least fifteen mechanisms/models have been developed to explain QPPs in solar flares, which mainly assume the presence of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) oscillations in coronal structures (magnetic loops and current sheets) or quasi-periodic regimes of magnetic reconnection. We review the most important and interesting results on flare QPPs, with an emphasis on the results of recent years, and we present the predicted and prominent observational signatures of each of the fifteen mechanisms. However, it is not yet possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion as to the correct underlying QPP mechanism because of the qualitative, rather than quantitative, nature of most of the models and also due to insufficient observational information on the physical properties of the flare region, in particular the spatial structure of the QPP source. We also review QPPs in stellar flares, where progress is largely based on solar-stellar analogies, suggesting similarities in the physical processes in flare regions on the Sun and magnetoactive stars. The presence of QPPs with similar properties in solar and stellar flares is, in itself, a strong additional argument in favor of the likelihood of solar-stellar analogies. Hence, advancing our understanding of QPPs in solar flares provides an important additional channel of information about stellar flares. However, further work in both theory/simulations and in observations is needed.

Electron-Only Reconnection in Plasma Turbulence

Hybrid-Vlasov–Maxwell simulations of magnetized plasma turbulence including non-linear electron-inertia effects in a generalized Ohm's law are presented. When fluctuation energy is injected on scales sufficiently close to ion-kinetic scales, the ions efficiently become de-magnetized and electron-scale current sheets largely dominate the distribution of the emerging current structures, in contrast to the usual picture, where a full hierarchy of structure sizes is generally observed. These current sheets are shown to be the sites of electron-only reconnection (e-rec), in which the usual electron exhausts are unaccompanied by ion outflows and which are in qualitative agreement with those recently observed by MMS in the Earth's turbulent magnetosheath, downstream of the bow shock. Some features of the e-rec phenomenology are shown to be consistent with an electron magnetohydrodynamic description. Simulations suggest that this regime of collisionless reconnection may be found in turbulent systems where plasma processes, such as micro-instabilities and/or shocks, overpower the more customary turbulent cascade by directly injecting energy close to the ion-kinetic scales.

The onset of electron-only reconnection

Motivated by recent observations of ‘electron-only’ magnetic reconnection, without an ion-scale sheet or ion outflows, in both the Earth’s magnetosheath and in numerical simulations, we study the formation and reconnection of electron-scale current sheets at low plasma $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ . We first show that ideal sheets collapse to thicknesses much smaller than the ion scales, by deriving an appropriate analogue of the Chapman–Kendall collapse solution. Second, we show that, in practice, reconnection onset happens in these collapsing sheets once they reach a critical aspect ratio, because the tearing instability then becomes faster than their collapse time scale. We show that this can happen for sheet thicknesses larger than the ion scale or at only a few times the electron scale, depending on plasma parameters and the aspect ratio of the collapsing structure, thereby unifying the usual picture of ion-coupled reconnection and the new regime of electron-only reconnection. We derive relationships between plasma $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ , ion-to-electron temperature ratio, the aspect ratio, electron outflow velocity and the final thickness of the sheets, and thus determine under what circumstances electron-scale sheets form and reconnect.

Quasi-periodic Pulsation Detected in Lyα Emission During Solar Flares

Abstract We investigated the quasi-periodic pulsation (QPP) in Lyα, X-ray, and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) emissions during two solar flares, i.e., an X-class (SOL2012-01-27T) and a C-class (SOL2016-02-08T). The full-disk Lyα and X-ray flux during these solar flares were recorded by the EUV Sensor and X-Ray Sensor on board the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The flare regions were located from the EUV images measured by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. The QPP could be identified as a series of regular and periodic peaks in the light curves, and its quasi-periodicity was determined from the global wavelet and Fourier power spectra. A quasi-periodicity at about 3 minutes is detected during the impulsive phase of the X-class flare, which could be explained as the acoustic wave in the chromosphere. Interestingly, a quasi-periodicity at roughly 1 minute is discovered during the entire evolutionary phases of solar flares, including the precursor, impulsive, and gradual phases. This is the first report of 1 minute QPP in the Lyα emission during solar flares, in particular during the flare precursor. It may be interpreted as a self-oscillatory regime of the magnetic reconnection, such as magnetic dripping.

The Mechanism of Electron Injection and Acceleration in Transrelativistic Reconnection

Abstract Electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection is thought to play a key role in time-variable high-energy emission from astrophysical systems. By means of particle-in-cell simulations of transrelativistic reconnection, we investigate electron injection and acceleration mechanisms in low-β electron–proton plasmas. We set up a diversity of density and field structures (e.g., X-points and plasmoids) by varying the guide field strength and choosing whether to trigger reconnection or let it spontaneously evolve. We show that the number of X-points and plasmoids controls the efficiency of electron acceleration, with more X-points leading to a higher efficiency. Using on-the-fly acceleration diagnostics, we also show that the nonideal electric fields associated with X-points play a critical role in the first stages of electron acceleration. As a further diagnostic, we include two populations of test particles that selectively experience only certain components of electric fields. We find that the out-of-plane component of the parallel electric field determines the hardness of the high-energy tail of the electron energy distribution. These results further our understanding of electron acceleration in this regime of magnetic reconnection and have implications for realistic models of black hole accretion flows.

Analysis of fast turbulent reconnection with self-consistent determination of turbulence timescale

We present results of a Reynolds-averaged turbulence model simulation on the problem of magnetic reconnection. In the model, in addition to the mean density, momentum, magnetic field, and energy equations, the evolution equations of the turbulent cross-helicity W, turbulent energy K, and its dissipation rate ε are simultaneously solved to calculate the rate of magnetic reconnection for a Harris-type current sheet. In contrast to previous studies based on algebraic modeling, the turbulence time scale is self-determined by the nonlinear evolutions of K and ε, their ratio being a time scale. We compare the reconnection rate produced by our mean-field model to the resistive nonturbulent MHD rate. To test whether different regimes of reconnection are produced, we vary the initial strength of turbulent energy and study the effect on the amount of magnetic flux reconnected in time. We obtain that the time scale of turbulence self-adjusts to always produce fast reconnection.

Three-dimensional stability of current sheets supported by electron pressure anisotropy

The stability of electron current sheets embedded within the reconnection exhaust is studied with a 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulation. The electron current layers studied here form self-consistently in a reconnection regime with a moderate guide field, are supported by electron pressure anisotropy with the pressure component parallel to the magnetic field direction larger than the perpendicular components, and extend well beyond electron kinetic scales. In 3D, in addition to drift instabilities common to nearly all reconnection exhausts, the regime considered also exhibits an electromagnetic instability driven by the electron pressure anisotropy. While the fluctuations modulate the current density on small scales, they do not break apart the general structure of the extended electron current layers. The elongated current sheets should therefore persist long enough to be observed both in space observations and in laboratory experiments.

FINMHD: An Adaptive Finite-element Code for Magnetic Reconnection and Formation of Plasmoid Chains in Magnetohydrodynamics

Abstract Solving the problem of fast eruptive events in magnetically dominated astrophysical plasmas requires the use of particularly well adapted numerical tools. Indeed, the central mechanism based on magnetic reconnection is determined by a complex behavior with quasi-singular forming current layers enriched by their associated small-scale magnetic islands called plasmoids. A new code is thus presented for the solution of two-dimensional dissipative magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations in cartesian geometry specifically developed to this end. A current–vorticity formulation representative of an incompressible model is chosen in order to follow the formation of the current sheets and the ensuing magnetic reconnection process. A finite-element discretization using triangles with quadratic basis functions on an unstructured grid is employed, and implemented via a highly adaptive characteristic-Galerkin scheme. The adaptivity of the code is illustrated on simplified test equations and finally for magnetic reconnection associated with the nonlinear development of the tilt instability between two repelling current channels. Varying the Lundquist number S has allowed us to study the transition between the steady-state Sweet–Parker reconnection regime (for S ≲ 104) and the plasmoid-dominated reconnection regime (for S ≳ 105). The implications for the understanding of the mechanism explaining the fast conversion of free magnetic energy in astrophysical environments such as the solar corona are briefly discussed.

Particle Acceleration in Kinetic Simulations of Nonrelativistic Magnetic Reconnection with Different Ion–Electron Mass Ratios

Abstract By means of fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we study whether the proton-to-electron mass ratio m i /m e influences the energy spectrum and underlying acceleration mechanism during magnetic reconnection. While kinetic simulations are essential for studying particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection, a reduced m i /m e is often used to alleviate the demanding computing resources, which leads to artificial scale separation between electron and proton scales. Recent kinetic simulations with high mass ratios have suggested new regimes of reconnection, as electron pressure anisotropy develops in the exhaust region and supports extended current layers. In this work, we study whether different m i /m e changes the particle acceleration processes by performing a series of simulations with different mass ratio (m i /m e = 25–400) and guide field strength in a low-β plasma. We find that mass ratio does not strongly influence reconnection rate, magnetic energy conversion, ion internal energy gain, plasma energization processes, ion energy spectra, and the acceleration mechanisms for high-energy ions. Simulations with different mass ratios are different in electron acceleration processes, including electron internal energy gain, electron energy spectrum, and the acceleration efficiencies for high-energy electrons. We find that high-energy electron acceleration becomes less efficient when the mass ratio gets larger because the Fermi-like mechanism associated with particle curvature drift becomes less efficient. These results indicate that when particle curvature drift dominates high-energy particle acceleration, the further the particle kinetic scales are from the magnetic field curvature scales (∼d i ), the weaker the acceleration will be.

Onset of Secondary Instabilities and Plasma Heating during Magnetic Reconnection in Strongly Magnetized Regions of the Low Solar Atmosphere

Abstract We numerically study magnetic reconnection on different spatial scales and at different heights in the weakly ionized plasma of the low solar atmosphere (around 300–800 km above the solar surface) within a reactive 2.5D multifluid plasma–neutral model. We consider a strongly magnetized plasma (β ∼ 6%) evolving from a force-free magnetic configuration and perturbed to initialize formation of a reconnection current sheet. On large scales, the resulting current sheets are observed to undergo a secondary “plasmoid” instability. A series of simulations at different scales demonstrates a cascading current sheet formation process that terminates for current sheets with width of 2 m and length of ∼100 m, corresponding to the critical current sheet aspect ratio of ∼50. We also observe that the plasmoid instability is the primary physical mechanism accelerating the magnetic reconnection in this plasma parameter regime. After plasmoid instabilities appear, the reconnection rate sharply increases to a value of ∼0.035, observed to be independent of the Lundquist number. These characteristics are very similar to magnetic reconnection in fully ionized plasmas. In this low-β guide-field reconnection regime, both the recombination and collisionless effects are observed to have a small contribution to the reconnection rate. The simulations show that it is difficult to heat the dense weakly ionized photospheric plasmas to above 2 × 104 K during the magnetic reconnection process. However, the plasmas in the low solar chromosphere can be heated above 3 × 104 K with reconnection magnetic fields of 500 G or stronger.