Particle acceleration in a 3D high-Lundquist-number plasmoid-dominated regime

Magnetic reconnection is often associated with energetic particles. MHD regimes found in the corona should in principle yield long thin Sweet Parker current sheets, little particle acceleration, and reconnection rates much smaller than observed. However, recent work suggests that when the Lundquist number, S, exceeds around 10,000, 2D current sheets break up into plasmoids, allowing for much faster reconnection rates and more particle acceleration. In a 3D MHD model we find a similar critical Lundquist number. We investigate the acceleration of particles in this 3D environment using test particles. This study should improve our understanding of the acceleration of particles in the solar corona.