HR: 1340h
AN: SM23B-0421    [Abstracts]
TI: Non-driven Reconnection as a function of guide field strength
AU: Driscoll, J
EM: jdriscoll@copper.net
AF: UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. of ECE, MC0407, La Jolla, CA 92093-0407 United States
AU: Karimabadi, H
EM: homa@ece.ucsd.edu
AF: UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. of ECE, MC0407, La Jolla, CA 92093-0407 United States
AU: * Pritchett, P
EM: pritchet@physics.ucla.edu
AF: UCLA, Dept Physics 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547 United States
AU: Daughton, W
EM: william-daughton@uiowa.edu
AF: Univ of Iowa, Dept of Phys and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA 52242 United States
AU: Lapenta, G
EM: lapenta@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Lab, MS K717, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AU: Krauss-Varban, D
EM: varban@ssl.berkeley.edu
AF: UC Berkeley, Space Sciences Lab 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720-7450 United States
AB: It is now generally accepted that magnetic reconnection is the dominant process at the magnetopause that enables the transfer of mass, momentum, and energy from the solar wind into the Earth's magnetosphere. Observations have also shown that magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause can sometimes be quasi-steady but at other times very unsteady (resulting in so-called flux transfer events). The reason for this dual behavior is, however, not understood. Another issue of considerable controversy is the existence of a "universal" reconnection rate, independent of the system size. Here we use a combination of hybrid (electron fluid, kinetic ions) and full particle simulations to address these issues. Our previous work using hybrid simulations has shown that reconnection can be intermittent even in the anti-parallel case. It is not clear whether this result remains in the presence of kinetic electron physics. In order to minimize the influences of initial imposed perturbations on the simulation results, we start the simulations with an island kinetic equilibrium and let the system evolve self-consistently. We compare the nonlinear evolution of the system as a function of guide field strength and system size and test the hypothesis of a "universal" reconnection rate. The conditions for steady state reconnection and relevance of results to magnetopause will be discussed.
DE: 2723 Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835)
DE: 2724 Magnetopause and boundary layers
DE: 7526 Magnetic reconnection (2723, 7835)
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection (2723, 7526)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005