Fast cross‐scale energy transfer during turbulent magnetic reconnection

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is a key fundamental process in collisionless plasmas that explosively converts magnetic energy to plasma kinetic and thermal energies through a change of magnetic field topology in a central electron-scale region called the electron diffusion region (EDR). Past simulations and observations demonstrated that this process causes efficient energy conversion through the formation of multiple macro-scale or micro-scale magnetic islands/flux ropes. However, the coupling of these phenomena on different spatiotemporal scales is still poorly understood. Here, based on a new large-scale fully-kinetic simulation with a realistic, initially-fluctuating magnetic field, we demonstrate that macro-scale evolution of turbulent reconnection involving merging of macro-scale islands induces repeated, quick formation of new electron-scale islands within the EDR which soon grow to larger scales. This process causes an efficient cross-scale energy transfer from electron- to larger-scales, and leads to strong electron energization within the growing islands.