Perpendicular Localization of Electron Holes by Spatially Inhomogeneous Flows During Magnetic Reconnection*

Bipolar fields signaling the presence of electron phase space holes have been observed in situ by satellites near regions of magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetopause and magnetotail. In order to identify possible origins for such holes, a recent numerical study [1] employed 1D and 2D electrostatic Vlasov simulations initialized with electron and ion distributions taken from 2D electromagnetic Particle in Cell (PIC) simulations of magnetic reconnection. Both electron-electron instabilities along the X-line and electron-ion (i.e., Buneman) instabilities along the separatrix were found to be viable sources of electron holes. However, long-lived coherent Buneman-driven holes only formed when the destabilizing current was restricted to a narrow channel perpendicular to the local magnetic field vector B. In this presentation we extend the 2D Vlasov study of electron holes driven by unstable distributions to include both e-e and e-i instabilities localized in the direction perpendicular to B. Emphasis will be placed on how the ion/electron mass and temperature ratios (mi/me and Ti/Te) and the magnetization ratios (Ωe/ωe and Ωi/ωi) influence the properties of the resulting electron holes, including their spatial size and aspect ratio. Distributions from recent implicit PIC reconnection simulations [2] will be used to guide the initialization of the Vlasov simulations.

*Research supported by NASA, NSF, and DOE.

[1] M. V. Goldman, D. L. Newman, and P. L. Pritchett, "Vlasov Simulations of Electron Holes Driven by Particle Distributions from PIC Reconnection Simulations with a Guide Field," submitted to Geophys.~Res.~Lett. (2008).

[2] A. Divin, G. Lapenta, D. L. Newman and M. V. Goldman, "Implicit PIC Simulations of Guide Field Magnetic Reconnection," this meeting.