Correlations between magnetic reconnection and energetic ion flow events have been measured with merging force free spheromaks at the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment. The reconnection layer is measured with a linear probe array and ion flow is directly measured with a retarding grid energy analyzer. Flow has been measured both in the plane of the reconnection layer and out of the plane. The mos...

Citation: Treumann RA and Baumjohann W (2015) Broad current sheets, current bifurcation, and collisionless reconnection—An Opinion on " Onset of fast magnetic reconnection via subcritical bifurcation " by Z. Magnetic reconnection in current carrying plasmas, in particular when the plasma is collisionless, is an efficient channel of dissipating the energy temporarily stored in electric currents ...

We report on studies of Bose-Einstein correlations and color reconnection in hadronic W pair production at LEP. Bose-Einstein correlations between identical particles from the decay of different W’s are studied by comparing the particle correlation in hadronic W pair decays to those in events which are constructed from the combination of the hadronic parts of two events where one of the Ws deca...

I propose that solar coronal heating is a self-regulating process that keeps the coronal plasma roughly marginally collisionless. The self-regulating mechanism is based on the interplay of two effects. First, plasma density controls coronal energy release via the transition between the slow collisional Sweet– Parker regime and the fast collisionless reconnection regime. This transition takes pl...

We study one event of reconnection onset associated to a small substorm on 27 September 2006 by using Cluster observations at inter-spacecraft separation of about 10 000 km. We focus on the acceleration of suprathermal electrons during different stages of reconnection. We show that several distinct stages of acceleration occur: (1) moderate acceleration during reconnection of pre-existing plasm...

This paper presents a numerical model for predicting the evolution of the pattern of ionospheric convection in response to general time-dependent magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause and in the cross-tail current sheet of the geomagnetic tail. The model quantifies the concepts of ionospheric flow excitation by Cowley and Lockwood (1992), assuming a uniform spatial distribution of i...

We present a model for the spontaneous onset of fast magnetic reconnection in a weakly collisional plasma, such as the solar corona. When a current layer of macroscopic width undergoes collisional (Sweet-Parker) reconnection, a narrow dissipation region forms around the X-line. This dissipation region naturally becomes narrower during the reconnection process as stronger magnetic fields are con...

*Correspondence: Yasuhito Narita, Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstr. 6, A-8042 Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] Magnetic reconnection in space plasmas remains a challenge in physics in that the phenomenon is associated with the breakdown of frozen-in magnetic field in a collisionless medium. Such a topology change can also be found in superfluid...

The evolution of solar magnetic arcades is investigated with the use of MHD simulations imposing resistivity on sheared magnetic elds. It is found that there is a critical amount of shear, over which magnetic reconnection can take place in an arcade-like eld geometry to create a magnetic island. The process leading to reconnection cannot be solely attributed to a tearing instability, but rather...

This paper reviews the progress in understanding the fundamental physics of magnetic reconnection, focusing on significant results in the past decade from dedicated laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and space astrophysical observations. Particularly in the area of local reconnection physics, many important findings have been made with respect to two-fluid dynamics, the profile of t...