Nongyrotropic Electron Distributions in a 2D Particle-in-Cell Simulation of Magnetic Reconnection with a Guide Field

Abstract:

We capture the location and characterize the source of nongyrotropic electrons in the inflow and outflow regions of a 2.5D particle-in-cell simulation of reconnection with a guide field. We apply a measure of nongyrotropy defined from the eigenvalues of the full 3D nongyrotropic pressure tensor to identify the location of nongyrotropic electrons. We subsequently trace the development of nongyrotopic electron distributions in positions along a slice through the inflow and outflow regions where the nongryotropy measure is large. We discuss the underlying physics of the nongyrotropy and compare and contrast our results with those previously found for the case of anti-parallel reconnection.