Enhanced electron mixing and heating in 3-D asymmetric reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause

Le, Ari Yitzchak; Daughton, William Scott; Chen, Li -Jen; Egedal, Jan

doi:10.1002/2017GL072522

Title: Enhanced electron mixing and heating in 3-D asymmetric reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause

Journal Article · Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL072522· OSTI ID:1402651

^[1];

^[2]; Egedal, Jan ^[3]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (United States)
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

Here, electron heating and mixing during asymmetric reconnection are studied with a 3-D kinetic simulation that matches plasma parameters from Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft observations of a magnetopause diffusion region. The mixing and heating are strongly enhanced across the magnetospheric separatrix compared to a 2-D simulation. The transport of particles across the separatrix in 3-D is attributed to lower hybrid drift turbulence excited at the steep density gradient near the magnetopause. In the 3-D simulation (and not the 2-D simulation), the electron temperature parallel to the magnetic field within the mixing layer is significantly higher than its upstream value in agreement with the MMS observations.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396; SC0016278

OSTI ID:: 1402651

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1402345

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-17-27740; TRN: US1702888

Journal Information:: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 5; ISSN 0094-8276

Publisher:: American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 55 works

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Title: Enhanced electron mixing and heating in 3-D asymmetric reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause

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