HR: 0830h
AN: SH31A-1088    [PDF]
TI: Quick reconnection triggering mediated by the lower-hybrid-drift instability
AU: * Shinohara, I
EM: iku@stp.isas.ac.jp
AF: Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, 229-8510 Japan
AU: Fujimoto, M
EM: fujimoto@geo.titech.ac.jp
AF: Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8551 Japan
AB: Recently, we have shown that the effects of lower-hybrid waves at the edges of the current sheet provide a quick triggering of magnetic reconnection even in ion-scale current sheets. However, there is an upper-limit to the current sheet thickness for this type of quick triggering via the lower-hybrid-drift instability alone because the lower-hybrid-drift wave activity becomes weaker in the thicker current sheet. Therefore, we should take account of other effects, like, couplings with other instability modes (CSKI, KHI), or effects of perturbation from the outside of the current sheet, etc. to understand reconnection triggering in thicker current sheets. In order to examine these topics, we have performed a parametric study on the thin electron current layer formation due to the current driven instabilities by 2D full particle simulation runs. In this paper, we evaluate whether the quick triggering mechanism mediated by the lower-hybrid-drift instability is truly realistic or not.
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection
DE: 7843 Numerical simulation studies
DE: 7867 Wave/particle interactions
SC: SPA - Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting