Final Scientific/Technical Report for "Role of Electron Kinetic Effects on the Macroscopic Structure and Evolution of Collisionless Reconnection in Simulations with Open Boundary Conditions"
The final years of this grant have been dedicated to diagnosing the observable properties of Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection (CMR) as disclosed by the open boundary condition PIC simulations developed under this grant. Particular attention has focussed on identifying the Electron Diffusion Region (EDR), the short scale domain where the process is thought to be enabled. The critical issue has been the need for experimental closure for CMR that is widely invoked in astrophysics, but has actually rather little direct, incontrovertible evidence for its involvement. This difficulty arises because CMR is about topology change of the magnetic field - a concept that is not conducive to single, or even few point correlations as are beginning to be possible with spacecraft armada, like Cluster or the planned Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission to be launched in 2014. Alternate formulations about the time rate of magnetic flux inventoried by a moving observer, reformulate the needed evidence in terms of the curl of various weak vector fields, such as E+UexB, that is zero in ideal MHD. To sense E+UexB from space measurements is already a heroic task. The curl of such a small vector field is outside the domain of the possible.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-06ER54893
- OSTI ID:
- 1004611
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/54893 Final Report
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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