The structure of the magnetic reconnection exhaust boundary

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structure of shocks at the exhaust boundaries during collisionless magnetic reconnection, revealing that pressure anisotropy prevents classical shocks and leads to a series of shocks and rotational waves that shape the exhaust boundary.

Contribution

It introduces a novel understanding of shock structures in reconnection exhausts, emphasizing the role of pressure anisotropy and the firehose stability parameter epsilon in shock formation.

Findings

Classical Petschek switch-off-slow shocks are prevented by pressure anisotropy.

The exhaust boundary consists of two shocks and a rotational wave.

Outflow speed is reduced below the Walen condition due to shock structure.

Abstract

The structure of shocks that form at the exhaust boundaries during collisionless reconnection of anti-parallel fields is studied using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and modeling based on the anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic equations. Large-scale PIC simulations of reconnection and companion Riemann simulations of shock development demonstrate that the pressure anisotropy produced by counterstreaming ions within the exhaust prevents the development of classical Petschek switch-off-slow shocks (SSS). The shock structure that does develop is controlled by the firehose stability parameter epsilon=1-mu_0(P_parallel-P_perpendicular)/ B^2 through its influence on the speed order of the intermediate and slow waves. Here P_parallel and P_perpendicular are the pressure parallel and perpendicular to the local magnetic field. The exhaust boundary is made up of a series of two shocks and a rotational wave. The first shock takes epsilon from unity upstream to a plateau of 0.25 downstream. The condition epsilon =0.25 is special because at this value the speeds of nonlinear slow and intermediate waves are degenerate. The second slow shock leaves epsilon=0.25 unchanged but further reduces the amplitude of the reconnecting magnetic field. Finally, in the core of the exhaust epsilon drops further and the transition is completed by a rotation of the reconnecting field into the out-of-plane direction. The acceleration of the exhaust takes place across the two slow shocks but not during the final rotation. The result is that the outflow speed falls below that expected from the Walen condition based on the asymptotic magnetic field. A simple analytic expression is given for the critical value of epsilon within the exhaust below which SSSs no longer bound the reconnection outflow.