Dissipation of Angular Momentum in Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is an important phenomenon that occurs throughout the universe in magnetized plasmas. It is a process whereby adjacent magnetic field lines embedded in a plasma gas break and reconnect to one another. One of the unresolved questions regarding magnetic reconnection is how it dissipates energy, an important aspect of reconnection’s energy budget and efficiency. It has been shown (Wendel et. al., 2021) that local electron vorticity is subject to an instability bifurcation that determines whether vorticity, and therefore electrons, remain fixed to a given filed line, exchanging angular momentum. The boundary conditions and E_⊥ impose vortex null points along each of the reconnecting magnetic field lines within the electron diffusion region (EDR). These predictions are supported by the PIC simulation analysis. Expanding on these results, we verify theoretical estimates of electron angular momentum dissipation against in situ space observations of magnetic reconnection. We engage in the calculation and analysis of the electron dissipation inferred from spacecraft observations of reconnection, using data from NASA's Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission. The use of quadratic spatial interpolation for four spacecraft was implemented to determine the existence of vorticity null points within the tetrahedron formed by the four spacecrafts in the MMS data, extracting useful statistical information in support of the theoretical arguments and simulations.