A study of the tearing mode with continuous Vlasov simulations

The tearing mode instability is the archetype of non-steady magnetic reconnection, whereby structures with multiple X-lines and magnetic islands are produced at resonant surfaces. The linear and nonlinear stages of the tearing mode instability have been studied extensively over the years in MHD, Hall MHD and in various kinetic models. Fluid simulations have clearly shown that in MHD secondary magnetic islands develop naturally at collapsed X-points, but that such a secondary nonlinear processes is quenched by dispersive effects. Whether the same suppression of secondary, smaller scale plasmoids occurs in fully kinetic simulations is not as well understood, and it seems to be affected by boundary conditions and system size.

Here we perform Vlasov continuum simulations from the muphyII framework to investigate the linear and nonlinear stage of the tearing mode. We adopt parameters that correspond to the so-called “electron-only” reconnection, particularly relevant for reconnection in the Earth’s magnetotail.