Relativistic electron production during driven magnetic reconnection

摘要: [1] Two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are used to determine the mechanism for producing relativistic electrons during externally driven magnetic reconnection in a plasma sheet configuration that models near-Earth growth phase magnetotail. The dominant process is found be of inverse Landau-damping type which those with velocity component v x ≈ 0 at X line accelerated across tail by inductive electric field E y . This produces power-law energy spectrum slope ∼5-6, agreement recent observations.