Three-dimensional particle simulation of plasma instabilities and collisionless reconnection in a current sheet

Generation of anomalous resistivity and dynamical development of collisionless reconnection in the vicinity of a magnetically neutral sheet are investigated by means of a three-dimensional particle simulation. For no external driving source, two different types of plasma instabilities are excited in the current layer. The lower hybrid drift instability (LHDI) is observed to grow in the periphery of current layer in an early period, while a drift kink instability (DKI) is triggered at the neutral sheet in a late period as a result of the nonlinear deformation of the current sheet by the LHDI. A reconnection electric field grows at the neutral sheet in accordance with the excitation of the DKI. When an external driving field exists, the convective electric field penetrates into the current layer through the particle kinetic effect and collisionless reconnection is triggered by the convective electric field earlier than the DKI is excited. It is also found that the anisotropic ion distribution is formed thro...

[1]  D. Winske.  Current‐driven microinstabilities in a neutral sheet , 1981 .

[2]  N. T. Gladd,et al.  Anomalous transport properties associated with the lower‐hybrid‐drift instability , 1975 .

[3]  Motohiko Tanaka,et al.  Simulations on lower hybrid drift instability and anomalous resistivity in the magnetic neutral sheet , 1981 .

[4]  C. Birdsall,et al.  Plasma Physics via Computer Simulation , 2018 .

[5]  N. A. Krall,et al.  Low-Frequency Instabilities in Magnetic Pulses , 1971 .

[6]  B. Coppi,et al.  Dynamics of the Geomagnetic Tail , 1966 .

[7]  Equilibration rate of spin temperature in a strongly magnetized pure electron plasma , 1993 .

[8]  N. A. Krall,et al.  Anomalous Resistivity in Collisionless Plasma Shock Waves , 1969 .

[9]  Tetsuya Sato,et al.  Drift-kink instability induced by beam ions in field-reversed configurations , 1999 .

[10]  W. Daughton.  Kinetic theory of the drift kink instability in a current sheet , 1998 .

[11]  Tetsuya Sato,et al.  Particle simulation study of collisionless driven reconnection in a sheared magnetic field , 1996 .

[12]  W. Horton.  MECHANISM FOR ANOMALOUS CURRENT PENETRATION. , 1972 .

[13]  Ritoku Horiuchi,et al.  Electromagnetic instability and anomalous resistivity in a magnetic neutral sheet , 1996 .

[14]  Ottaviani,et al.  Nonlinear collisionless magnetic reconnection. , 1993, Physical review letters.

[15]  James Drake,et al.  Two-fluid theory of collisionless magnetic reconnection , 1997 .

[16]  Y. C. Lee,et al.  Nonlinear Evolution of Collisionless and Semicollisional Tearing Modes , 1977 .

[17]  Giovanni Lapenta,et al.  A kinetic theory for the drift-kink instability , 1997 .

[18]  Christopher T. Russell,et al.  Structure of the tail plasma/current sheet at ∼11 RE and its changes in the course of a substorm , 1993 .

[19]  A. A. Galeev,et al.  Basic plasma physics II , 1983 .

[20]  Perkins,et al.  Magnetic reconnection of plasma toroids with cohelicity and counterhelicity. , 1990, Physical review letters.

[21]  Takaya Hayashi,et al.  Externally driven magnetic reconnection and a powerful magnetic energy converter , 1979 .

[22]  Ritoku Horiuchi,et al.  Particle simulation study of driven magnetic reconnection in a collisionless plasma , 1994 .

[23]  K. Kusano,et al.  Role of compressibility on driven magnetic reconnection , 1991 .

[24]  K. Schindler,et al.  A theory of the substorm mechanism , 1974 .

[25]  N. T. Gladd,et al.  Lower-hybrid-drift wave turbulence in the distant magnetotail. Interim report , 1978 .

[26]  Drake,et al.  Structure of thin current layers: Implications for magnetic reconnection. , 1994, Physical review letters.

[27]  A. Fruchtman,et al.  Magnetic field penetration due to the Hall field in (almost) collisionless plasmas , 1993 .

[28]  Tetsuya Sato,et al.  Particle simulation of collisionless reconnection in three dimensions , 1999 .

[29]  K. Yamanaka.  Threshold of electromagnetic instability in a magnetic neutral sheet , 1977 .

[30]  Drake,et al.  Ion-controlled collisionless magnetic reconnection. , 1995, Physical review letters.

[31]  M. Inomoto,et al.  Experimental investigation of three-component magnetic reconnection by use of merging spheromaks and tokamaks , 1997 .

[32]  W. Daughton.  The unstable eigenmodes of a neutral sheet , 1999 .

[33]  Robert M. Winglee,et al.  Tearing instability, flux ropes, and the kinetic current sheet kink instability in the Earth`s magnetotail: A three-dimensional perspective from particle simulations , 1996 .