Journal
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SPACE PHYSICS
Volume 120, Issue 8, Pages 6188-6198Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2014JA020969
Keywords
magnetic reconnection; secondary reconnection; reconnection jet; magnetic island
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41174140, 41374168, 41174147, 41404132]
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
- Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China [20110141110043]
- Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities [2042014kf0017]
- LABEX Plas@Par [ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02]
- Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province [20142BCB23006]
- ANR [11-JS56-0008]
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Magnetic reconnection, as one important energy dissipation process in plasmas, has been extensively studied in the past several decades. Magnetic reconnection occurring in the downstream of a primary X line is referred to as secondary reconnection. In this paper, we used kinetic simulations to investigate the secondary reconnection in detail. We found that secondary reconnection is reversed by the compression caused by the outflowing jet originating from the primary reconnection site, which results in the erosion of the magnetic island between the two X lines within similar to 3(ci)(-1). We show the observational signatures expected in electromagnetic fields and plasma measurements in the Earth's magnetotail, associated with this mechanism. These simulation results could be applied to interpret the signatures associated with the evolution of earthward magnetic islands in the Earth's magnetotail.
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