Analysis of energy dissipation during the transition from ion-coupled to electron-only reconnection

Authors: Sohom Roy (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware), Riddhi Bandyopadhyay (Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University), William H. Matthaeus (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware), Prayash Sharma Pyakurel (Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley)

Magnetic reconnection is one of the fundamental physical processes involved in converting energy
stored in the magnetic fields of plasmas into the kinetic energy of the constituent particles. In the
standard model of reconnection, both ions and electrons participate in the reconnection process.
However, recently, some events were observed using MMS where the electrons participate, but the ions
do not, which was termed “electron-only reconnection”. In this study, we employ several PIC
simulations and MMS observations to investigate how the partition of the dissipated energy over
electrons vs. ions varies as the reconnection regime changes from ion-coupled to electron-only. A question of interest is how the partition of the dissipated energy varies with parameters such as
guide field strength and system size.