As a key to undertanding the basic mechanism for fast reconnection in solar flares, plasmoid-inducedreconnection and fractal reconnection are proposed and examined. We first briefly summarize recent solar observations that give us hints on the role of plasmoid (flux rope) ejections in flare energy release. We then discuss the plasmoid-induced-reconnection model, which is an extention of the cla...

" Observations of electron phase-space holes driven during magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. This work presents detailed experimental observations of electron phase-space holes driven during magnetic reconnection events on the Versatile Toroidal Facility. The holes ...

Magnetic reconnection is a promising process which provides efficient energy release in solar flares and geomagnetospheric substorms. The process is also considered be important in fusion devices because it can disturb the plasma confinement due to the magnetic field. The efficient energy release of the magnetic field requires a locally intense electric resistivity. However, the generation mech...

[1] In our efforts to bridge the gap between small-scale kinetic modeling and global simulations, we introduced an approach that allows to quantify the interaction between large-scale global magnetospheric dynamics and microphysical processes in diffusion regions near reconnection sites. We use the global MHD code BATS-R-US and replace an ad hoc anomalous resistivity often employed by global MH...

[1] Measurement of the in-plane Lorentz force and the outof-plane magnetic field associated with the Hall electric field near the reconnection zone in the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX) confirms expectations, based on simulation, theory and spacecraft data, that the quadrupolar out-of-plane magnetic field is a signature of collisionless effects in magnetic reconnection with a weak guide ...

The objective of the paper is to asses the specific spectral scaling properties of magnetic reconnection associated fluctuations/turbulence at the Earthward and tailward outflow regions observed simultaneously by the Cluster and Double Star (TC-2) spacecraft on September 26, 2005. Systematic comparisons of spectral characteristics, including variance anisotropy and scale-dependent spectral anis...

Magnetic null points act as scattering centers where particles describe chaotic orbits and the mixing effect increases the kinetic entropy. In an open system where convection of particles into/from the chaos region exists, the saturation of the entropy can be avoided, and continuous dissipation is achieved. The chaos-induced collisionless resistivity of ions enables fast magnetic reconnection. ...

In this Letter we report a clear and unambiguous observation of the out-of-plane quadrupole magnetic field suggested by numerical simulations in the reconnecting current sheet in the magnetic reconnection experiment. Measurements show that the Hall effect is large in the collision-less regime and becomes small as the collisionality increases, indicating that the Hall effect plays an important r...

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is a crucial component of the current paradigms star formation, dynamo theory, particle transport, magnetic reconnection, and evolution structure in interstellar medium (ISM) galaxies. Despite importance to astrophysical fluids, full theoretical framework based on solutions Navier–Stokes equations remains intractable. Observations provide only limited line-o...