Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 115, Issue 17, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.175004
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Funding
- NSF [AGS-1338944]
- U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration [DE-AC52-06NA25396]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [1552142] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1338944] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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To explain many natural magnetized plasma phenomena, it is crucial to understand how rates of collisionless magnetic reconnection scale in large magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) scale systems. Simulations of isolated current sheets conclude such rates are independent of system size and can be reproduced by the Hall-MHD model, but neglect sheet formation and coupling to MHD scales. Here, it is shown for the problem of flux-rope merging, which includes this formation and coupling, that the Hall-MHD model fails to reproduce the kinetic results. The minimum sufficient model must retain ion kinetic effects, which set the ion diffusion region geometry and give time-averaged rates that reduce significantly with system size, leading to different global evolution in large systems.
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