Movies of relativistic reconnection and particle acceleration in relativistic reconnection accompanying the article "Relativistic Reconnection: an Efficient Source of Nonthermal Particles" by Lorenzo Sironi and Anatoly Spitkovsky.
Current sheet and open field lines with footpoints near the edge of the polar cap. The magnetic axis is inclined relative to the rotation axis by 60 degrees. Red
field lines originate on the north polar cap and green field lines in the right panel originate on the south polar cap. Purple and grey colors indicate positive and negative net
local charge density in the current sheet, which is shown between 1.2-2 light cylinder radii.
Current sheet and open field lines with footpoints near the edge of the polar cap. The magnetic axis is inclined relative to the rotation axis by 90 degrees. Red field lines originate on the north polar cap and green field lines in the right panel originate on the south polar cap. Purple and grey colors indicate positive and negative net local charge density in the current sheet, which is shown between 1.2-2 light cylinder radii.
Magnetic field lines and current sheets for an orbiting neutron star binary with the magnetic moments of both
stars aligned with the rotation axis. The stars are not spinning, i.e., R_{LC,∗} = ∞.
Fields are by and large confined
to the half of the magnetosphere closer to their source star.
This movie shows the corotating field pattern as the orbit progresses.
Magnetic field lines and current sheets for an orbiting neutron star binary with the magnetic moments of both
stars aligned with the rotation axis. The stars are spinning
rapidly at ∼ ms periods, with R_{LC,∗}/R_∗ = 2.7. Stellar spin
winds fields backwards toroidally, and they can propagate to
the far side of the magnetosphere closer to the opposing star.
This movie shows the corotating field pattern as the orbit progresses.
Magnetic field lines and current sheets for an orbiting neutron star binary with the magnetic moment of one
star aligned with the rotation axis, and the magnetic moment of the other star tilted and antialigned with the rotation axis.
The stars are not spinning, i.e., R_{LC,∗} =
∞. Fields from each star encircle the other star and force
fields coming off the second star backwards toroidally.
This movie shows the corotating field pattern as the orbit progresses.
Magnetic field lines and current sheets for an orbiting neutron star binary with the magnetic moment of one star
aligned with the rotation axis, and the magnetic moment of the
other star tilted and antialigned with the rotation axis. The
stars are spinning rapidly at ∼ ms periods, with R_{LC,∗} /R_∗ =
2.7.
Stellar spin winds fields backwards toroidally.
This movie shows the corotating field pattern as the orbit progresses.
This movie shows the dynamical behavior of field lines seeded on one of the stars. We find
a clear cyclical process operating in the magnetosphere. First, field lines from one star can attach to the second star. Second, as the orbit progresses these field lines
develop twist and are expelled outward past the second
star as closed loops. Third, these loops open up to infinity and then reconnect on the far side of the first star
opposite to the second. Fourth, the orbital motion will
bring the second star back into contact with the closed
loops, and they reattach to the second star.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission has given us unprecedented access to high cadence particle and field data of magnetic reconnection at Earth's magnetopause. MMS first passed very near an X-line on 16 October 2015, the Burch event, and has since observed multiple X-line crossings. Subsequent 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) modeling efforts of and comparison with the Burch event have revealed a host of novel physical insights concerning magnetic reconnection, turbulence induced particle mixing, and secondary instabilities. In this study, we employ the Gkeyll simulation framework to study the Burch event with different classes of extended, multi-fluid magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), including models that incorporate important kinetic effects, such as the electron pressure tensor, with physics-based closure relations designed to capture linear Landau damping. Such fluid modeling approaches are able to capture different levels of kinetic physics in global simulations and are generally less costly than fully kinetic PIC. We focus on the additional physics one can capture with increasing levels of fluid closure refinement via comparison with MMS data and existing PIC simulations. In particular, we find that the ten-moment model well captures the agyrotropic structure of the pressure tensor in the vicinity of the X-line and the magnitude of anisotropic electron heating observed in MMS and PIC simulations. However, the ten-moment model has difficulty resolving the lower hybrid drift instability, which has been observed to plays a fundamental role in heating and mixing electrons in the current layer.
