A note on the Weibel instability and thermal fluctuations

The thermal fluctuation level of the Weibel instability is recalculated. It is shown that the divergence of the fluctuations at long wavelengths, i.e. the Weibel infrared catastrophe, never occurs. At large wavelengths the thermal fluctuation level is terminated by the presence of even the smallest available stable thermal anisotropy. Weibel fields penetrate only one skin depth into the plasma. When excited inside, they cause layers of antiparallel fields of skin depth width and vortices which may be subject to reconnection.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Ann Geophy

Collisionless reconnection: Mechanism of self-ignition in thin current sheets

The spontaneous onset of magnetic reconnection in thin collisionless current sheets is shown to result from a thermal-anisotropy driven magnetic Weibel-mode, generating seed-magnetic field {\sf X}-points in the centre of the current layer.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, prepared for Annales Geophysica

Collisionless reconnection: The sub-microscale mechanism of magnetic field line interaction

Magnetic field lines are quantum objects carrying one quantum $\Phi_0=2\pi\hbar/e$ of magnetic flux and have finite radius $\lambda_m$. Here we argue that they possess a very specific dynamical interaction. Parallel field lines reject each other. When confined to a certain area they form two-dimensional lattices of hexagonal structure. We estimate the filling factor of such an area. Antiparallel field lines, on the other hand, attract each other. We identify the physical mechanism as being due to the action of the gauge potential field which we determine quantum mechanically for two parallel and two antiparallel field lines. The distortion of the quantum electrodynamic vacuum causes a cloud of virtual pairs. We calculate the virtual pair production rate from quantum electrodynamics and estimate the virtual pair cloud density, pair current and Lorentz force density acting on the field lines via the pair cloud. These properties of field line dynamics become important in collisionless reconnection, consistently explaining why and how reconnection can spontaneously set on in the field-free centre of a current sheet below the electron-inertial scale.Comment: 13 journal pages, 6 figures, submitted to Ann. Geophy

Plasma wave mediated electron pairing effects

Pairing of particles, in particular electrons, in high temperature plasma is generally not expected to occur. Here we investigate, based on earlier work, the possibility for electron pairing mediated in the presence of various kinds of plasma waves. We confirm the possibility for pairing in ion- and electron-acoustic waves, pointing out the importance of the former and the expected consequences. While electron-acoustic waves probably do not play any role, ion-acoustic waves may cause formation of heavy electron compounds. Lower hybrid waves also mediate pairing but under different conditions. Buneman modes which evolve from strong currents may cause pairing among trapped electrons constituting a heavy electron component that populates electron holes. All pairing processes are found to generate cold pair populations. They provide a mechanism of electron cooling which can be interpreted as kind of classical condensation, in some cases possibly accompanied by formation of current filaments, weak soft-X-ray emission and superfluidity which might affect reconnection physics.Comment: Ready for submission, Journal not yet specified. 10 pages, 2 figure

Superdiffusion revisited in view of collisionless reconnection

The concept of diffusion in collisionless space plasmas like those near the magnetopause and in the geomagnetic tail during reconnection is reexamined making use of the division of particle orbits into waiting orbits and break-outs into ballistic motion lying at the bottom, for instance, of Lévy flights. The rms average displacement in this case increases with time, describing superdiffusion, though faster than classical, is still a weak process, being however strong enough to support fast reconnection. Referring to two kinds of numerical particle-in-cell simulations we determine the anomalous diffusion coefficient, the anomalous collision frequency on which the diffusion process is based, and construct a relation between the diffusion coefficients and the resistive scale. The anomalous collision frequency from electron pseudo-viscosity in reconnection turns out to be of the order of the lower-hybrid frequency with the latter providing a lower limit, thus making similar assumptions physically meaningful. Tentative though not completely justified use of the κ distribution yields κ ≈ 6 in the reconnection diffusion region and, for the anomalous diffusion coefficient, the order of several times Bohm diffusivity