Comparison of test particle acceleration in torsional spine and fan reconnection regimes

Magnetic reconnection is a common phenomenon taking place in astrophysical and space plasmas, especially in solar flares which are rich sources of highly energetic particles. Torsional spine and fan reconnections are important mechanisms proposed for steady-state three-dimensional null-point reconne...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics of plasmas 2014-10, Vol.21 (10)
Main Authors: Hosseinpour, M., Mehdizade, M., Mohammadi, M. A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ACCELERATION
ASTROPHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
Energetic particles
Energy
KINETIC ENERGY
MEV RANGE 10-100
Particle acceleration
PLASMA
Plasma physics
PROTONS
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
SOLAR CORONA
SOLAR FLARES
Space plasmas
Spine
TEST PARTICLES
Torsion
Trajectories
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Summary:Magnetic reconnection is a common phenomenon taking place in astrophysical and space plasmas, especially in solar flares which are rich sources of highly energetic particles. Torsional spine and fan reconnections are important mechanisms proposed for steady-state three-dimensional null-point reconnection. By using the magnetic and electric fields for these regimes, we numerically investigate the features of test particle acceleration in both regimes with input parameters for the solar corona. By comparison, torsional spine reconnection is found to be more efficient than torsional fan reconnection in an acceleration of a proton to a high kinetic energy. A proton can gain as high as 100 MeV of relativistic kinetic energy within only a few milliseconds. Moreover, in torsional spine reconnection, an accelerated particle can escape either along the spine axis or on the fan plane depending on its injection position. However, in torsional fan reconnection, the particle is only allowed to accelerate along the spine axis. In addition, in both regimes, the particle's trajectory and final kinetic energy depend on the injection position but adopting either spatially uniform or non-uniform localized plasma resistivity does not much influence the features of trajectory.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.4898311