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Cause of super‐thermal electron heating during magnetotail reconnection
Author(s) -
Egedal J.,
Lê A.,
Zhu Y.,
Daughton W.,
Øieroset M.,
Phan T.,
Lin R. P.,
Eastwood J. P.
Publication year - 2010
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 - 10.1029/2010gl043487
Subject(s) - magnetic reconnection , physics , electron , kinetic energy , thermal , acceleration , computational physics , particle acceleration , distribution function , electric field , atomic physics , plasma , classical mechanics , nuclear physics , meteorology , quantum mechanics
We present a candidate mechanism for the energization of super‐thermal electrons during magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail. By analyzing in‐situ measurements of electron distribution functions we characterize the relative energy gain of the electrons as a function of energy, Δ(). For all the events considered the high energy part of Δ() is nearly independent of . This is the signature of energization in an acceleration potential, Φ ∥ , which is caused by parallel electric fields in the vicinity of the reconnection region. The same acceleration mechanism is also documented for a kinetic simulation of reconnection.