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Energetic electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process in plasma in which the conversion of magnetic energy into kinetic and thermal palsma energy and a change in the magnetic fields line topology take place. Understanding how energetic electrons, namely electrons with energies much larger than their thermal energyy, are accelerated during reconnection is a key issue in the plasma physics. Cluster observed signatured of acceleration of energetic alectrons (35-127 keV) during magnetic reconnection event when the spacecraft crossed a thin current sheet containing a transient feature of small-scale flux rope.

The measurements presented in the figure show that the largest fluxes are observed in the flux rope (green bar in the figure), where electrons are mainly directed perpendicular to the magnetic field and waves are weak. Smaller fluxes but harder spectra are observed at magnetic separatrices around hte diffusion region (red and blue bars), while the electric field in the diffusion region Ey~7 mV7m was much larger than typical steady reconnection values. It is suggested that the field-aligned electrons at separatrices as directly accelerated by the reconnection electric field in the diffusion region, whereas the perpendicular electrons are trapped within the flux rope and energized by a combination of betatron acceleration with non-adiabatic pitch-angle scattering. These observations indicated that thin current sheets during unsteady reconnectionare important for the acceleration of energetic electrons and those simultaneous measurements of electrons and electromagnetic fields are crucial to understand the physics of the acceleration mechanisms.

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Last update: 01/26/10
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