Two-step Acceleration of Energetic Electrons at Magnetic Flux Ropes during Turbulent Reconnection

Energetic electrons have been frequently observed during magnetic reconnection in the magnetotail. The acceleration process of the energetic electrons is not fully understood. In this paper, we select for a detailed study a case of energetic electron acceleration from the earlier reported interval o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2023-04, Vol.946 (2), p.67
Main Authors: Wang, Z., Vaivads, A., Fu, H. S., Cao, J. B., Lindberg, M., Turner, D. L., Ergun, R. E., Liu, Y. Y.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics
Earth magnetosphere
Electric fields
Electron acceleration
Electron flux
Electrons
Fluctuations
Interplanetary particle acceleration
Interplanetary turbulence
Jupiter
Magnetic fields
Magnetic flux
Magnetic reconnection
Magnetotails
Plasma physics
Solar magnetic reconnection
Space plasmas
Taylor series
Topology
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Summary:Energetic electrons have been frequently observed during magnetic reconnection in the magnetotail. The acceleration process of the energetic electrons is not fully understood. In this paper, we select for a detailed study a case of energetic electron acceleration from the earlier reported interval of turbulent magnetic reconnection in Earth’s magnetotail observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. We use the first-order Taylor expansion method to reconstruct the magnetic topology of electron acceleration sites from the data. We find that the energetic electron fluxes increase inside the flux rope forming in front of the magnetic pileup region. We show that the energetic electrons are produced by a two-step process where two different acceleration mechanisms are successively operating outside and inside the flux rope. First, the thermal electrons are energized in the field-aligned direction inside the magnetic pileup region owing to the Fermi mechanism forming a cigar-like distribution. Second, those energized electrons are further accelerated predominately antiparallel to the magnetic field direction by a parallel electric field inside the flux rope. Our findings provide information for a better understanding of the generation of energetic electrons during turbulent reconnection process.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
1538-4357
DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/acc026