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Exploring the Statistics of Magnetic Reconnection X-points in Kinetic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) Turbulence
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Exploring the Statistics of Magnetic Reconnection X-points in Kinetic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) Turbulence

Colby C Haggerty, Tulasi N Parashar, William H Matthaeus, Michael A Shay, Yan Yang, Minping Wan, Penny Wu and Sergio Servidio
arXiv.org
arXiv
06/15/2017
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1706.04905
url
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5001722View
Published (Version of record) This article has now been published in a journal and has been peer-reviewed by subject experts. This version may differ significantly from the preprint version. Access restricted to faculty, staff and students
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1706.04905View
Preprint (Author's original) This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

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Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous phenomenon in turbulent plasmas. It is an important part of the turbulent dynamics and heating of space and astrophysical plasmas. We examine the statistics of magnetic reconnection using a quantitative local analysis of the magnetic vector potential, previously used in magnetohydrodynamics simulations, and now generalized to fully kinetic PIC simulations. Different ways of reducing the particle noise for analysis purposes including multiple smoothing techniques are explored. We find that a Fourier filter applied at the Debye scale is an optimal choice for analyzing PIC data. Finlay, we find a broader distribution of normalized reconnection rates compared to the MHD limit with rates as large as 0.5 but with an average of approximately 0.1.
 Physics - Space Physics

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