Collisionless Reconnection with Weak Slow Shocks Under Anisotropic MHD Approximation

Magnetic reconnection accompanied by a pair of slow-mode shock waves, known as Petschek’s theory, has been widely studied as an efficient mechanism to convert magnetically stored energy to thermal and/or kinetic energy in plasmas. Satellite observations in the Earth’s magnetotail, on the other hand, report that the detection of slow shocks is rare compared with the theory. As an important step to bridge the gap between the observational fact and the Petschek-type reconnection, we performed one- and two- dimensional collisionless magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of magnetic reconnection paying special attention to the effect of temperature anisotropy. In high-beta plasmas such as a plasma sheet in the magnetotail, it is expected that even weak temperature anisotropy can greatly modify the dynamics.

We demonstrate that the slow shocks do exist in the reconnection layer even under the anisotropic temperature. The resultant shocks, however, are weaker than those in isotropic MHD in terms of plasma compression. In addition, the amount of magnetic energy released across the shock is extremely small, that is, the shock is no longer switch-off type. In spite of the weakness of the shocks, the reconnection rates measured by the inflow velocities are kept at the same level as the isotropic cases. Once the slow shock forms, the downstream plasma is heated in highly anisotropic manner, and the firehose-sense anisotropy affects the wave structure in the system. In particular, it is remarkable that the sequential order of propagation of slow shocks and rotational discontinuities reverses depending upon the magnitude of a superposed guide field.

Our result is consistent with the rareness of the slow shock detection in the magnetotail, and implies that shocks do not necessarily play an important role. Furthermore, a variety of wave structure of a reconnection layer shown here will help interpretation of observational data in collisionless reconnection.