Magnetic reconnection is a driving engine of solar flares, stellar flares, and quite probably bursty events in high-energy astrophysical sites. The reconnection process is driven by a small-scale “dissipation region” surrounding the reconnection point (X-point), at which a plasma ideal condition breaks down. Recently, kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have revealed that the electron id...

[1] In a 2008 publication a first principles calculation of the dayside reconnection rate expressed in terms of upstream–solar wind parameters led to a rudimentary solar wind coupling function R1 for the Earth’s magnetosphere. Four improvements to that derivation are added in the present paper, resulting in a more correct solar wind control function describing the rate at which solar wind magne...

We present a spaceand ground-based study exploiting data from the coordinated Cluster and Double Star missions in order to investigate dayside magnetic reconnection under BY+ dominated IMF conditions. In-situ observations of magnetosheath flux transfer events combined with measurements of pulsed poleward and dawnward directed flows in the pre-noon sector high-latitude northern hemisphere ionosp...

Interaction of a shockwavewith a current sheet is investigated by the two-dimensional numerical magnetohydrodynamic model. In accordance with the solar coronal conditions, the ratio of the thermal to magnetic pressures of 0.1 and the shock Alfven Mach number of about 1.25 are used. It is found that the shock wave initiates magnetic reconnection process in the current sheet. Further, it is found...

Time-dependent resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations are carried out to study a flux rope eruption caused by magnetic reconnection with implication in coexistent flare-CME (coronal mass ejection) events. An early result obtained in a recent analysis of double catastrophe of a flux rope system is used as the initial condition, in which an isolated flux rope coexists with two current sheets: ...

Recent numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection in two dimensions have shown that, when the resistivity is strongly localized, the reconnection region develops a Petschek-like structure, with the width of the inner diffusion region being of the order of the resistivity localization scale. In this paper, we combine this fact with a realistic model for locally-enhanced anomalous resistivity...

Kinetic effects resulting from the two-fluid physics play a crucial role in the fast collisionless reconnection, which is a process to explosively release massive energy stored in magnetic fields in space and astrophysical plasmas. In-situ observations in the Earth's magnetosphere provide solid consistence with theoretical models on the point that kinetic effects are required in the collisionle...

In situ measurements of magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail are presented showing that even a moderate guide field (20% of the reconnecting field) considerably distorts ion diffusion region structure. The Hall magnetic and electric fields are asymmetric and shunted away from the current sheet; an appropriately scaled particle-in-cell simulation is found to be in excellent agreement...

It is known that exact magnetic reconnection solutions can be constructed for collisionally dominated resistive plasmas. In this paper we refine the collisional resistive description by invoking an Ohm’s law that includes Hall current and plasma inertial contributions. We first demonstrate the surprising fact that the analytic treatment of both two and three dimensional current sheet reconnecti...

Two-dimensional numerical simulations of the effect of background turbulence on 2D resistive magnetic reconnection are presented. For sufficiently small values of the resistivity (η) and moderate values of the turbulent power ( ), the reconnection rate is found to have a much weaker dependence on η than the Sweet-Parker scaling of η and is even consistent with an η-independent value. For a give...