Authors: Paul Cassak (West Virginia University), Milton Arencibia (West Virginia University), Hasan Barbhuiya (West Virginia University), Amir Caspi (Southwest Research Institute), Haoming Liang (University of Alabama), Steven Petrinec (Lockheed Martin ATC), Jiong Qiu (Montana State University), Vadim Roytershteyn (Space Science Institute), Andrei Runov (UCLA), Michael Shay (University of Delaware), Marc Swisdak (University of Maryland)

In this poster, we discuss two independent aspects of reconnection physics of potential relevance to solar flares that are not captured in MHD models. First, reconnection typically begins locally and is thought to spread along the polarity inversion line, leading to ribbons that elongate in time. The mechanism of reconnection spreading can be different in (resistive) MHD and two-fluid (Hall-MHD plus electron inertia). We discuss recent work predicting the spreading of localized reconnection for current sheets of uniform thickness with and without a guide field, and for sheets of non-uniform thickness without a guide field. Predictions are verified using 3D two-fluid and MHD simulations. Second, electrons in the reconnection exhaust jet are unmagnetized, but get magnetized by the compressed magnetic field outside the electron diffusion region. Magnetizing the jet leads to electron ring distributions. We discuss recent work predicting the properties of the electron ring distributions in terms of upstream plasma parameters and validate them using 2D particle-in-cell simulations. For parameters relevant to solar flares, the temperature associated with the ring distributions can be as large as 10s of MK, so we explore the possibility that they could provide a mechanism of producing the observed loop-top temperatures seen in super-hot solar flares.