The inner structure of collisionless magnetic reconnection: The electron-frame dissipation measure and Hall fields

It was recently proposed that the electron-frame dissipation measure, theenergy transfer from the electromagnetic field to plasmas in the electron'srest frame, identifies the dissipation region of collisionless magneticreconnection [Zenitani et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 195003 (2011)]. The measureis further applied to the electron-scale structures of antiparallelreconnection, by using two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Thesize of the central dissipation region is controlled by the electron-ion massratio, suggesting that electron physics is essential. A narrow electron jetextends along the outflow direction until it reaches an electron shock. The jetregion appears to be anti-dissipative. At the shock, electron heating isrelevant to a magnetic cavity signature. The results are summarized to aunified picture of the single dissipation region in a Hall magnetic geometry.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures; published in Physics of Plasmas; this version contains all the corrections in PoP 21, 129906 (2014