Driven reconnection about a magnetic X-line with strong guide component.

A two-dimensional, two-fluid model is used to investigate driven magnetic reconnection in collisionless or semicollisional plasmas. The reconnection is driven by externally induced plasma flows in a background magnetic configuration that has a hyperbolic null component in the reconnection plane and a strong component, the so-called guide component, perpendicular to that plane. A dynamic solution is obtained in which the reconnection proceeds in two phases: an initial one whose characteristic rate is a fraction of the Alfvén frequency, and a later one whose rate is determined by the electron collision frequency.