Electron acceleration during magnetic islands coalescence and division process in a guide field reconnection

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/ac21c0

Abstract The magnetic merging process related to pairwise magnetic islands coalescence is investigated by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations with a guide field. Owing to the force of attraction between parallel currents within the initial magnetic islands, the magnetic islands begin to approach each other and merge into one big island. We find that this newly formed island is unstable and can be divided into two small magnetic islands spontaneously. Lastly, these two small islands merge again. We follow the time evolution of this process, in which the contributions of three mechanisms of electron acceleration at different stages, including the Fermi, parallel electric field, and betatron mechanisms, are studied with the guide center theory.

Keywords: magnetic reconnection magnetic islands electron acceleration particle-in-cell simulation

Received: 13 April 2021
Revised: 01 August 2021
Accepted manuscript online: 27 August 2021

PACS:	52.35.Vd	(Magnetic reconnection)
	52.65.-y	(Plasma simulation)
	52.65.Rr	(Particle-in-cell method)
	94.20.wc	(Plasma motion; plasma convection; particle acceleration)

Fund: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41804159 and 41774169) and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. QYZDJ-SSW-DQC010).

Corresponding Authors: Huanyu Wang
E-mail: iuwon@mail.ustc.edu.cn

Cite this article:

Shengxing Han(韩圣星), Huanyu Wang(王焕宇), and Xinliang Gao(高新亮) Electron acceleration during magnetic islands coalescence and division process in a guide field reconnection 2022 Chin. Phys. B 31 025202

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Electron acceleration during magnetic islands coalescence and division process in a guide field reconnection

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