Pressure-Strain Interaction: III. Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Magnetic Reconnection

How energy is converted into thermal energy in weakly collisional and collisionless plasma processes such as magnetic reconnection and plasma turbulence has recently been the subject of intense scrutiny. The pressure-strain interaction has emerged as an important piece, as it describes the rate of c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-11
Main Authors: Barbhuiya, M Hasan, Cassak, Paul A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bulk density
Cartesian coordinates
Collisionless plasmas
Compressibility
Decomposition
Fluid flow
Incompressible flow
Magnetic fields
Particle in cell technique
Plasma turbulence
Thermal energy
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Summary:How energy is converted into thermal energy in weakly collisional and collisionless plasma processes such as magnetic reconnection and plasma turbulence has recently been the subject of intense scrutiny. The pressure-strain interaction has emerged as an important piece, as it describes the rate of conversion between bulk flow and thermal energy density. In two companion studies, we presented an alternate decomposition of the pressure-strain interaction to isolate the effects of converging/diverging flow and flow shear instead of compressible and incompressible flow, and we derived the pressure-strain interaction in magnetic field-aligned coordinates. Here, we use these results to study pressure-strain interaction during two-dimensional anti-parallel magnetic reconnection. We perform particle-in-cell simulations and plot the decompositions in both Cartesian and magnetic field-aligned coordinates. We identify the mechanisms contributing to positive and negative pressure-strain interaction during reconnection. This study provides a roadmap for interpreting numerical and observational data of the pressure-strain interaction, which should be important for studies of reconnection, turbulence, and collisionless shocks.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2211.13159