Magnetic Island Merging: Two-dimensional MHD Simulation and Test-Particle Modeling

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution 2D MHD simulations and test-particle modeling to analyze magnetic reconnection, plasmoid formation, and particle acceleration near O-points in a merging magnetic island system.

Contribution

It combines detailed MHD simulations with analytic and test-particle approaches to understand particle acceleration mechanisms during magnetic island merging.

Findings

Transition from steady to chaotic reconnection at high Lundquist numbers

Magnetic islands exhibit complex substructures at high resolution

Particles can be accelerated beyond 0.7c near O-points in the system.

Abstract

In an idealized system where four current channels interact in a two-dimensional periodic setting, we follow the detailed evolution of current sheets (CSs) forming in between the channels, as a result of a large-scale merging. A central X-point collapses and a gradually extending CS marks the site of continuous magnetic reconnection. Using grid-adaptive, non-relativistic, resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations, we establish that slow, near-steady Sweet-Parker reconnection transits to a chaotic, multi-plasmoid fragmented state, when the Lundquist number exceeds about ten to the fourth power, well in the range of previous studies on plasmoid instability. The extreme resolution employed in the MHD study shows significant magnetic island substructures. With relativistic test-particle simulations, we explore how charged particles can be accelerated in the vicinity of an O-point, either at embedded tiny-islands within larger "monster"-islands or near the centers of monster-islands. While the planar MHD setting artificially causes strong acceleration in the ignored third direction, it also allows for the full analytic study of all aspects leading to the acceleration and the in-plane-projected trapping of particles in the vicinities of O-points. Our analytic approach uses a decomposition of the particle velocity in slow- and fast-changing components, akin to the Reynolds decomposition in turbulence studies. Our analytic description is validated with several representative test-particle simulations. We find that after an initial non-relativistic motion throughout a monster island, particles can experience acceleration in the vicinity of an O-point beyond 0.7c, at which speed the acceleration is at its highest efficiency