Relativistic electron production during driven magnetic reconnection

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.