On the value of the reconnection rate

Comisso, L.; Bhattacharjee, A.

doi:10.1017/s002237781600101x

Title: On the value of the reconnection rate

Journal Article · Fri Nov 04 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Plasma Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/s002237781600101x· OSTI ID:1353403

^[1];

^[1]

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States). Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences and Princeton Physics Lab.

Numerical simulations have consistently shown that the reconnection rate in certain collisionless regimes can be fast, of the order of $$0.1v_{A}B_{u}$$, where$$v_{A}$$and$$B_{u}$$are the Alfven speed and the reconnecting magnetic field upstream of the ion diffusion region. This particular value has been reported in myriad numerical simulations under disparate conditions. But, despite decades of research, the reasons underpinning this specific value remain mysterious. We present an overview of this problem and discuss the conditions under which the '0.1 value' is attained. Finally, we explain why this problem should be interpreted in terms of the ion diffusion region length.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Cite

Export

Save

Research Organization:: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-09CH-11466.

OSTI ID:: 1353403

Journal Information:: Journal of Plasma Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 06; ISSN 0022-3778

Publisher:: Cambridge University PressCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Citation Metrics:

Cited by: 52 works

Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (55)

Magnetic Reconnection Priest, Eric; Forbes, Terry https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511525087	book	October 2009
Intuitive approach to magnetic reconnection Kulsrud, Russell M. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 18, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3628312	journal	November 2011
General theory of the plasmoid instability Comisso, L.; Lingam, M.; Huang, Y. -M. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 10 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4964481	journal	October 2016
Magnetic reconnection: Sweet-Parker versus Petschek Kulsrud, Russell M. Earth, Planets and Space, Vol. 53, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353251	journal	June 2001
Fast reconnection in high-Lundquist-number plasmas due to the plasmoid Instability Bhattacharjee, A.; Huang, Yi-Min; Yang, H. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3264103	journal	November 2009
Geometrical properties of three-dimensional reconnecting magnetic fields with nulls Greene, John M. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 93, Issue A8 https://doi.org/10.1029/JA093iA08p08583	journal	January 1988
Scaling of Sweet–Parker reconnection with secondary islands Cassak, P. A.; Shay, M. A.; Drake, J. F. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3274462	journal	December 2009
Scaling of Magnetic Reconnection in Relativistic Collisionless Pair Plasmas Liu, Yi-Hsin; Guo, Fan; Daughton, William Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.095002	journal	March 2015
Scaling of forced magnetic reconnection in the Hall-magnetohydrodynamic Taylor problem Fitzpatrick, Richard Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 11, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1640378	journal	March 2004
Fast reconnection in high temperature plasmas Kleva, Robert G.; Drake, J. F.; Waelbroeck, F. L. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 2, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.871095	journal	January 1995
New models for fast steady state magnetic reconnection Priest, E. R.; Forbes, T. G. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 91, Issue A5 https://doi.org/10.1029/JA091iA05p05579	journal	January 1986
Phase diagram for magnetic reconnection in heliophysical, astrophysical, and laboratory plasmas Ji, Hantao; Daughton, William Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 18, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3647505	journal	November 2011
Current singularities: Drivers of impulsive reconnection Bhattacharjee, A.; Germaschewski, K.; Ng, C. S. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 12, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1872893	journal	April 2005
Collisionless magnetic reconnection in large-scale electron-positron plasmas Daughton, William; Karimabadi, Homa Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2749494	journal	July 2007
On the Relation between Reconnected Magnetic Flux and Parallel Electric Fields in the Solar Corona Hesse, Michael; Forbes, Terry G.; Birn, Joachim The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 631, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1086/432677	journal	October 2005
Self‐Regulation of the Reconnecting Current Layer in Relativistic Pair Plasma Reconnection Zenitani, S.; Hesse, M. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 684, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1086/590425	journal	September 2008
Nonlinear studies of m =1 modes in high‐temperature plasmas Aydemir, A. Y. Physics of Fluids B: Plasma Physics, Vol. 4, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.860355	journal	November 1992
Fast impulsive reconnection and current sheet intensification due to electron pressure gradients in semi-collisional plasmas Ma, Z. W.; Bhattacharjee, A. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 23, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1029/96GL01600	journal	June 1996
Recent advances in collisionless magnetic reconnection Porcelli, F.; Borgogno, D.; Califano, F. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Vol. 44, Issue 12B https://doi.org/10.1088/0741-3335/44/12B/327	journal	November 2002
The scaling of embedded collisionless reconnection Shay, M. A.; Drake, J. F.; Swisdak, M. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 11, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1705650	journal	May 2004
Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains Loureiro, N. F.; Schekochihin, A. A.; Cowley, S. C. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 10 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2783986	journal	October 2007
The relation between reconnected flux, the parallel electric field, and the reconnection rate in a three-dimensional kinetic simulation of magnetic reconnection Wendel, D. E.; Olson, D. K.; Hesse, M. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4833675	journal	December 2013
Ion-Controlled Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection Biskamp, D.; Schwarz, E.; Drake, J. F. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 75, Issue 21 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.3850	journal	November 1995
Fast Magnetic Reconnection in the Plasmoid-Dominated Regime Uzdensky, D. A.; Loureiro, N. F.; Schekochihin, A. A. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 105, Issue 23 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.235002	journal	December 2010
Sweet's mechanism for merging magnetic fields in conducting fluids Parker, E. N. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 62, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1029/JZ062i004p00509	journal	December 1957
Scaling laws of resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection in the high-Lundquist-number, plasmoid-unstable regime Huang, Yi-Min; Bhattacharjee, A. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 17, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3420208	journal	June 2010
Transition from collisional to kinetic regimes in large-scale reconnection layers Daughton, W.; Roytershteyn, V.; Albright, B. J. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 103, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.065004	journal	August 2009
The role of electron dissipation on the rate of collisionless magnetic reconnection Shay, M. A.; Drake, J. F. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 25, Issue 20 https://doi.org/10.1029/1998GL900036	journal	October 1998
Turbulent magnetic reconnection Matthaeus, W. H.; Lamkin, S. L. Physics of Fluids, Vol. 29, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.866004	journal	January 1986
Reconnection rates of magnetic fields including the effects of viscosity Park, W.; Monticello, D. A.; White, R. B. Physics of Fluids, Vol. 27, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.864502	journal	January 1984
Gyro-induced acceleration of magnetic reconnection Comisso, L.; Grasso, D.; Waelbroeck, F. L. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4821840	journal	September 2013
Collisionless Reconnection in an Electron-Positron Plasma Bessho, N.; Bhattacharjee, A. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 24 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.245001	journal	December 2005
Particle Acceleration and Plasma Dynamics During Magnetic Reconnection in the Magnetically Dominated Regime Guo, Fan; Liu, Yi-Hsin; Daughton, William The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 806, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/806/2/167	journal	June 2015
Rapid Change of Field line Connectivity and Reconnection in Stochastic Magnetic Fields Huang, Yi-Min; Bhattacharjee, A.; Boozer, Allen H. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 793, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/793/2/106	journal	September 2014
Hamiltonian magnetic reconnection Grasso, D.; Pegoraro, F.; Porcelli, F. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Vol. 41, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1088/0741-3335/41/12/306	journal	December 1999
Current Sheets in Solar Flares Priest, E. R. Unstable Current Systems and Plasma Instabilities in Astrophysics https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6520-1_22	book	January 1985
Visco-resistive plasmoid instability Comisso, Luca; Grasso, Daniela Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4942940	journal	March 2016
Thermal-Inertial Effects on Magnetic Reconnection in Relativistic Pair Plasmas Comisso, Luca; Asenjo, Felipe A. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 113, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.045001	journal	July 2014
Geospace Environmental Modeling (GEM) Magnetic Reconnection Challenge Birn, J.; Drake, J. F.; Shay, M. A. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, Vol. 106, Issue A3 https://doi.org/10.1029/1999JA900449	journal	March 2001
Magnetic reconnection via current sheets Biskamp, D. Physics of Fluids, Vol. 29, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.865670	journal	January 1986
Transition to whistler mediated magnetic reconnection Mandt, M. E.; Denton, R. E.; Drake, J. F. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 21, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1029/93GL03382	journal	January 1994
Extended theory of the Taylor problem in the plasmoid-unstable regime Comisso, L.; Grasso, D.; Waelbroeck, F. L. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4918331	journal	April 2015
Nonlinear dynamics of the m =1 instability and fast sawtooth collapse in high-temperature plasmas Wang, Xiaogang; Bhattacharjee, A. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 70, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.1627	journal	March 1993
A Time-Dependent Model for Magnetic Reconnection in the Presence of a Separator Wilmot-Smith, A. L.; Hornig, G. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 740, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/740/2/89	journal	October 2011
Fast Reconnection in Nonrelativistic 2D Electron-Positron Plasmas Chacón, L.; Simakov, Andrei N.; Lukin, V. S. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.025003	journal	July 2008
Aspects of three-dimensional magnetic reconnection Borgogno, D.; Grasso, D.; Porcelli, F. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 12, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1857912	journal	March 2005
Magnetic reconnection Yamada, Masaaki; Kulsrud, Russell; Ji, Hantao Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.82.603	journal	March 2010
Magnetic Reconnection in Two-Dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence Servidio, S.; Matthaeus, W. H.; Shay, M. A. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.115003	journal	March 2009
Plasmoid-induced-reconnection and fractal reconnection Shibata, Kazunari; Tanuma, Syuniti Earth, Planets and Space, Vol. 53, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353258	journal	June 2001
Influence of the Hall effect and electron inertia in collisionless magnetic reconnection Andrés, Nahuel; Dmitruk, Pablo; Gómez, Daniel Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4942418	journal	February 2016
Role of Dispersive Waves in Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection Rogers, B. N.; Denton, R. E.; Drake, J. F. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 87, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.195004	journal	October 2001
The scaling of collisionless, magnetic reconnection for large systems Shay, M. A.; Drake, J. F.; Rogers, B. N. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 26, Issue 14 https://doi.org/10.1029/1999GL900481	journal	July 1999
Computing the reconnection rate in turbulent kinetic layers by using electron mixing to identify topology Daughton, W.; Nakamura, T. K. M.; Karimabadi, H. Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 21, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4875730	journal	May 2014
Three-dimensional kinematic reconnection in the presence of field nulls and closed field lines Lau, Yun-Tung; Finn, John M. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 350 https://doi.org/10.1086/168419	journal	February 1990
Fully kinetic simulations of undriven magnetic reconnection with open boundary conditions Daughton, William; Scudder, Jack; Karimabadi, Homa Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 13, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2218817	journal	July 2006

Cited By (8)

Study of magnetic reconnection in large-scale magnetic island coalescence via spatially coupled MHD and PIC simulations Makwana, Kirit D.; Keppens, Rony; Lapenta, Giovanni Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 25, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5037774	journal	August 2018
Was the cosmic ray burst detected by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope on 22 June 2015 caused by a transient weakening of the geomagnetic field or by an interplanetary anisotropy? Mohanty, P. K.; Arunbabu, K. P.; Aziz, T. Physical Review D, Vol. 97, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.97.082001	journal	April 2018
The Interplay of Magnetically Dominated Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Producing Nonthermal Particles Comisso, Luca; Sironi, Lorenzo The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 886, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab4c33	journal	November 2019
FINMHD: An Adaptive Finite-element Code for Magnetic Reconnection and Formation of Plasmoid Chains in Magnetohydrodynamics Baty, Hubert The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 243, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ab2cd2	journal	July 2019
Why does steady-state magnetic reconnection have a maximum local rate of order 0.1? Liu, Yi-Hsin; Hesse, M.; Guo, F. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1611.07859	text	January 2016
3D magnetic reconnection and its application to solar flares Janvier, Miho arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1612.06513	text	January 2016
A Review of the 0.1 Reconnection Rate Problem Cassak, P. A.; Liu, Y. -H.; Shay, M. A. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1708.03449	text	January 2017
Relativistic Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Two-Dimensional Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection Uzdensky, Dmitri A. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2007.09533	text	January 2020

Similar Records

Why fast magnetic reconnection is so prevalent

Journal Article · Wed Jan 24 00:00:00 EST 2018 · Journal of Plasma Physics · OSTI ID:1353403

Boozer, Allen H.

Diffusive shock re-acceleration

Journal Article · Tue May 22 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Journal of Plasma Physics · OSTI ID:1353403

Caprioli, Damiano; Zhang, Horace; Spitkovsky, Anatoly

Particle acceleration in relativistic magnetic flux-merging events

Journal Article · Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Journal of Plasma Physics · OSTI ID:1353403

Lyutikov, Maxim; Sironi, Lorenzo; Komissarov, Serguei S.; +1 more

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
astrophysical plasmas
plasma nonlinear phenomena
space plasma physics
high-temperature plasmas
collisionless magnetic reconnection
impulsive
reconnection
current sheets
fields
dynamics

Title: On the value of the reconnection rate

Citation Formats

References (55)

Cited By (8)

Similar Records

Related Subjects