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Relativistic electron production during driven magnetic reconnection
Author(s) -
Pritchett P. L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2005gl025267
Subject(s) - physics , magnetic reconnection , electron , plasma , electric field , magnetic field , computational physics , quantum electrodynamics , astrophysics , atomic physics , quantum mechanics
Two‐ and three‐dimensional particle‐in‐cell simulations are used to determine the mechanism for producing relativistic electrons during externally driven magnetic reconnection in a plasma sheet configuration that models the near‐Earth growth phase magnetotail. The dominant process is found to be of the inverse Landau‐damping type in which those electrons with velocity component v x ≈ 0 at the X line are accelerated across the tail by the inductive reconnection electric field E y . This process produces a power‐law energy spectrum for the electrons with a slope of ∼5–6, in agreement with recent observations.