Скачать или смотреть Frank Cheng (Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory)：Plasma Merging and Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process of converting magnetic energy into plasma energy. We will review the experimental results of plasma merging and magnetic reconnection and explain the basic concept of magnetic reconnection from the early MHD models, to particle-in-cell simulation results, and to the analytic kinetic theory [1-8]. In particular, the recent experimental results show that the magnetic energy is converted mostly to ions with ion energy gain proportional to(Brec^2 /n_in), where n_in is the plasma density and Brec is the reconnecting magnetic field component in the upstream. To understand the key magnetic reconnection results, we will show the particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation results and an analytic theory to explain the mechanisms of ion and electron heating/acceleration by understanding the reconnection layer structure of electrostatic potential, magnetic field, current, and electron and ion
densities and flow velocities. In particular, the electrostatic potential is produced due to charge separation resulting from different electron and ion meandering orbit widths in magnetic field reversed geometry, and ions gain energy mainly from the electrostatic potential drop in the current sheet and downstream region. Electrons gain energy mainly due to acceleration by the inductive reconnection electric field in the current sheet. The ion energy gain scales with (Brec^2/n_in) and the electron energy gain is proportional to(Brec^2/n_in)Se where Se (＞ 1) depends on how long electrons are accelerated by the reconnection electric field in the current sheet.