27 July 2015 to 21 August 2015
Nordita, Stockholm
Europe/Stockholm timezone

Electron betatron acceleration in the dipolarization front driven by magnetic reconnection

11 Aug 2015, 14:50
25m
FD5 (FD5)

FD5

FD5

Invited Workshop, August 10-14 Post-noon II

Speaker

Prof. Quanming Lu (University of Science and Technology of China)

Description

A large scale two-dimensional (2-D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation is performed in this paper to investigate electron acceleration in the dipolarization front (DF) region during magnetic reconnection. It is found that the DF is mainly driven by an ion outflow which also generates a positive potential region behind the DF. The DF propagates with an almost constant speed and gets growing, while the electrons in the DF region can be highly energized in the perpendicular direction due to betatron acceleration. For the first time, we reveal that there exists a velocity threshold, only the electrons below the threshold can be trapped by the parallel electric potential in the DF region and then energetized by betatron acceleration.

Primary author

Prof. Quanming Lu (University of Science and Technology of China)

Co-authors

Dr Can Huang (University of Science and Technology of China) Dr Mingyu Wu (University of Science and Technology of China)

Presentation materials