Weigang Wan

Electron acceleration during guide field magnetic reconnection

Particle-in-cell simulations of the guide field intermittent magnetic reconnection are performed to study electron acceleration and pitch angle distributions. During the growing stage of reconnection, the power-law distribution function for the high-energy electrons and the pitch angle distributions of the low-energy electrons are obtained and compare favorably with observations by the Wind spacecraft. Direct evidence is found for the secondary acceleration during the later reconnection stage. A correlation between the generation of energetic electrons and the induced reconnection electric field is found. Energetic electrons are accelerated first around the X line, and then in the region outside the diffusion region, when the reconnection electric field has a bipolar structure. The physical mechanisms of these accelerations are discussed. The in-plane electrostatic field that traps the low-energy electrons and causes the anisotropic pitch angle distributions has been observed.

Evolutions of non-steady-state magnetic reconnection

The full evolutions of collisionless non-steady-state magnetic reconnection are studied with full kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. There are different stages of reconnection: the onset or early growing stage when the out-of-plane electric field (Ey) structure is a monopole at the X-point, the bipolar stage when the Ey structure is bipolar and the outer electron diffusion region (EDR) is being elongated over time, and the possible final steady-state stage when Ey is uniform in the reconnection plane. We find the change of reconnection rate is not empowered or dependent on the length of the EDR. During the early growing stage, the EDR is elongated while the reconnection rate is growing. During the later stage, the reconnection rate may significantly decrease but the length of the inner EDR is largely stable. The results indicate that reconnection is not controlled by the downstream physics, but rather by the availability of plasma inflows from upstream. The physical mechanism of the EDR elongation is s...

Shock-driven discrete vortex evolution on a high-Atwood number oblique interface

We derive a model describing vorticity deposition on a high-Atwood number interface with a sinusoidal perturbation by an oblique shock propagating from a heavy into a light material. Limiting cases of the model result in vorticity distributions that lead to Richtmyer-Meshkov and Kelvin-Helmholtz instability growth. For certain combinations of perturbation amplitude, wavelength, and tilt of the shock, a regime is found in which discrete, co-aligned, vortices are deposited on the interface. The subsequent interface evolution is described by a discrete vortex model, which is found to agree well with both RAGE simulations and experiments at early times.