TWO-DIMENSIONAL PARTICLE SIMULATION STUDY OF MAGNETIC RECONNECTION

The process of magnetic reconnection in the collisionless plasma and distributions of particles in different positions are studied based on two-dimensional particle simulation. It is found that the procedure of the magnetic reconnection saturates at t=14.8 Ω_i^-1 after a phase of linear growth, and the difference between the ion and electron dynamics in the diffusion region gives rise to in-plane (Hall) currents, which produces an out-of-plane B_y field with a quadrupolar structure. The velocity distributions of ion and electron deviate from the initial Maxwell distribution and are characterized by non-local multi-component distributions with high anisotropy, which is consistent with the observations of Seon and Onsager. At the same time the electron acceleration and heating take place near the X-type region, so the electron distribution shows a high-energy tail in the electron energy distribution. At last, we find that outgoing flux velocity of the electrons near the X point is higher than that of the ions. The flux velocity of the electrons is about 2 Alfvén speed, while the flux velocity of the ions is about 1 Alfvén speed.