“Magneto-Kinetic” Reconnection Beyond Fluid Descriptions

Abstract

As shown by previous contributions [1, 2], magnetic reconnection can be driven by the kinetic energy of particle populations in well confined plasmas. Therefore, processes are investigated where magnetic reconnection in collisionless regimes [3] is sustained by non-thermal distributions in phase space of the main components of a plasma column and, in particular, of the electron population. In this context the multifluid descriptions, that have been mostly relied upon [4] in order to find new directions for this area of investigations, are inadequate and the full kinetic kind of approach undertaken at first in Ref. [3] is needed. The simplest important case is that of unperturbed electron distributions with anisotropic temperature for which mode-particle resonances have a significant role in the evolution of the perturbed state. Relevant particle and thermal transport processes are considered in this context.