Mixing of the Electron Distribution Function in Nonlinear 2D Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

The role played by the conservation of the generalized magnetic linking conditions in the nonlinear evolution of the two‐dimensional collisionless, magnetic field reconnection is investigated in the framework of a drift‐kinetic description of the electron response. The time‐evolution of the electron distribution function at fixed parallel canonical momentum allows us to establish a clear analogy between the fluid and the kinetic regimes of the collisionless reconnection instability in terms of the advection and mixing of Lagrangian invariants.

Keywords:

• Magnetic reconnection
• plasma kinetic theory
• plasma nonlinear processes
• plasma simulations

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the INFM Parallel Computing Initiative and by the Italian Ministry for University and Scientific Research PRIN‐2002 funds. One ot the authors (T. V. Liseikina) acknowledges the support of the Russian Science Support Foundation.