IAFE   05512
INSTITUTO DE ASTRONOMIA Y FISICA DEL ESPACIO
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Effects of electron inertia in collisionless magnetic reconnection
Autor/es:
N. ANDRES, L. N. MARTIN, P. DMITRUK, D.O. GOMEZ
Revista:
PHYSICS OF PLASMAS
Editorial:
AMER INST PHYSICS
Referencias:
Lugar: New York; Año: 2014 vol. 21 p. 72904 - 72911
ISSN:
1070-664X
Resumen:
We present a study of collisionless magnetic reconnection within the framework of full two-fluid MHD for a completely ionized hydrogen plasma, retaining the effects of the Hall current, electron pressure and electron inertia. We performed 2.5D simulations using a pseudo-spectral code with no dissipative effects. We check that the ideal invariants of the problem are conserved down to round-off errors. Our numerical results confirm that the change in the topology of the magnetic field lines is exclusively due to the presence of electron inertia. The computed reconnection rates remain a fair fraction of the Alfvén velocity, which therefore qualifies as fast reconnection.