Secondary island formation in collisional and collisionless kinetic simulations of magnetic reconnection
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- UCSD
The evolution of magnetic reconnection in large-scale systems often gives rise to extended current layers that are unstable to the formation of secondary magnetic islands. The role of these islands in the reconnection process and the conditions under which they form remains a subject of debate. In this work, we benchmark two different kinetic particle-in-cell codes to address the formation of secondary islands for several types of global boundary conditions. The influence on reconnection is examined for a range of conditions and collisionality limits. Although secondary islands are observed in all cases, their influence on reconnection may be different depending on the regime. In the collisional limit, the secondary islands playa key role in breaking away from the Sweet-Parker scaling and enabling faster reconnection. In the collisionless limit, their formation is one mechanism for controlling the length of the diffusion region. In both limits, the onset of secondary islands leads to a time dependent behavior in the reconnection rate. In all cases considered, the number of secondary islands increases for larger systems.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 974299
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-07090; LA-UR-09-7090; TRN: US1002268
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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