The influence of out-of-plane shear flow on Hall magnetic reconnection and FTE generation

Magnetic reconnection driven by an out-of-plane shear flow is carried out based on the three-dimensional Hall magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) code. The simulation results indicate that an out-of-plane shear flow can drive a secondary tearing instability to quickly form a magnetic island without a guide field or a flux rope with a guide field. It is found that the size of the flux rope within similar to 240 Alfven time reaches about 20a (a is the initial current sheet thickness) that is roughly one Earth radius, the typical scale of Flux Transfer Event (FTE) observed at the dayside magnetopause. From a special simulation case based on the THEMIS data, it is found that an observed FTE is well reproduced by the Hall MHD simulation, which may give some clues on the generation mechanism of FTE.