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Out-of-plane electron currents in magnetic islands formed during collisionless magnetic reconnection
HUANG Can #,LU Quanming *,WU Mingyu,LU San,WANG Shui
CAS Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment, Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026
*Correspondence author
#Submitted by
Subject:
Funding: Ph.D. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (No.No. 20123402120010)
Opened online: 7 March 2013
Accepted by: none
Citation: HUANG Can,LU Quanming,WU Mingyu.Out-of-plane electron currents in magnetic islands formed during collisionless magnetic reconnection[OL]. [ 7 March 2013] http://en.paper.edu.cn/en_releasepaper/content/4523486
 
 
Secondary islands are considered to play a crucial role in collisionless magnetic reconnection. Based on 2-D particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate the characteristics of the out-of-plane electron currents in magnetic islands formed during collisionless magnetic reconnection with an initial guide field. In a primary island (formed simultaneously with the appearance of the X lines), due to the acceleration of the trapped electrons, the direction of the formed out-of-plane electron current is reverse to the original one. In the secondary island (formed in the vicinity of the X-line), the out-of-plane electron current is generated due to the accelerated electrons by the reconnection electric field in the vicinity of the X line. In such a way, the direction of the out-of-plane electron current in a secondary island is found to be opposite to that in a primary island. Such characteristics are found to be related to the evolution of the magnetic islands and then electron dynamics in the islands, which are proposed in this paper to be a possible criterion to identify a secondary island formed during collisionless magnetic reconnection, especially in the magnetotail.
Keywords:space physics; magnetic island; collisionless magnetic reconnection
 
 
 

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