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Electron energization and thermal to non-thermal energy partition during earth's magnetotail reconnection
Electrons in earth's magnetotail are energized significantly both in the form of heating and in the form of acceleration to non-thermal energies. While magnetic reconnection is considered to play an important role in this energization, it still remains unclear how electrons are energized and how energy is partitioned between thermal and non-thermal components. Here, we show, based on in situ observations by NASA's magnetospheric multiscale mission combined with multi-component spectral fitting methods, that the average electron energy [Formula: see text] (or equivalently temperature) is substantially higher when the locally averaged electric field magnitude [Formula: see text] is also higher. While this result is consistent with the classification of “plasma-sheet” and “tail-lobe” reconnection during which reconnection is considered to occur on closed and open magnetic field lines, respectively, it further suggests that a stochastic Fermi acceleration in 3D, reconnection-driven turbulence is essential for the production and confinement of energetic electrons in the reconnection region. The puzzle is that the non-thermal power-law component can be quite small even when the electric field is large and the bulk population is significantly heated. The fraction of non-thermal electron energies varies from sample to sample between ∼20% and ∼60%, regardless of the electric field magnitude. more »
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Award ID(s):
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10349944
Journal Name:
Physics of Plasmas
Volume:
29
Issue:
5
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
052904
ISSN:
1070-664X
4. Magnetic reconnection, especially in the relativistic regime, provides an efficient mechanism for accelerating relativistic particles and thus offers an attractive physical explanation for non-thermal high-energy emission from various astrophysical sources. I present a simple analytical model that elucidates key physical processes responsible for reconnection-driven relativistic non-thermal particle acceleration in the large-system, plasmoid-dominated regime in two dimensions. The model aims to explain the numerically observed dependencies of the power-law index $p$ and high-energy cutoff $\gamma _c$ of the resulting non-thermal particle energy spectrum $f(\gamma )$ on the ambient plasma magnetization $\sigma$ , and (for $\gamma _c$ ) on the system size $L$ . In this self-similar model, energetic particles are continuously accelerated by the out-of-plane reconnection electric field $E_{\rm rec}$ until they become magnetized by the reconnected magnetic field and eventually trapped in plasmoids large enough to confine them. The model also includes diffusive Fermi acceleration by particle bouncing off rapidly moving plasmoids. I argue that the balance between electric acceleration and magnetization controls the power-law index, while trapping in plasmoids governs the cutoff, thus tying the particle energy spectrum to the plasmoid distribution.
We perform particle-in-cell simulations to elucidate the microphysics of relativistic weakly magnetized shocks loaded with electron-positron pairs. Various external magnetizationsσ≲ 10−4and pair-loading factorsZ±≲ 10 are studied, whereZ±is the number of loaded electrons and positrons per ion. We find the following: (1) The shock becomes mediated by the ion Larmor gyration in the mean field whenσexceeds a critical valueσLthat decreases withZ±. AtσσLthe shock is mediated by particle scattering in the self-generated microturbulent fields, the strength and scale of which decrease withZ±, leading to lowerσL. (2) The energy fraction carried by the post-shock pairs is robustly in the range between 20% and 50% of the upstream ion energy. The mean energy per post-shock electron scales as$E¯e∝Z±+1−1$. (3) Pair loading suppresses nonthermal ion acceleration at magnetizations as low asσ≈ 5 × 10−6. The ions then become essentially thermal with mean energy$E¯i$, while electrons form a nonthermal tail, extending from$E∼Z±+1−1E¯i$to$E¯i$. Whenσ= 0, particle acceleration is enhanced by the formation of intense magnetic cavities that populate the precursor during the late stages of shock evolution. Here,more »