Collisionless magnetic reconnection via Alfvén eigenmodes.
We propose an analytic approach to the problem of collisionless magnetic reconnection formulated as a process of Alfvén eigenmodes' generation and dissipation. Alfvén eigenmodes are confined by the current sheet in the same way that quantum mechanical waves are confined by the tanh;{2} potential. The dynamical time scale of reconnection is the system scale divided by the eigenvalue propagation velocity of the n = 1 mode. The prediction of the n = 1 mode shows good agreement with the in situ measurement of the reconnection-associated Hall fields.
Dai
Lei
L
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.