Sliding Contacts in Planetary Magnetospheres

In the planetary magnetospheres there are specific places connected with velocity breakdown, reconnection, and dynamo processes. Here we pay attention to sliding layers. Sliding layers are formed in the ionosphere, on separatrix surfaces, at the magnetopauses and boundaries of stellar astrospheres, and at the Alfvén radius in the equatorial magnetosphere of rapidly rotating strongly magnetized giant planets. Although sliding contacts usually occur in thin local layers, their influence on the global structure of the surrounding space is very great. Therefore, they are associated with non-local processes that play a key role on a large scale. There can be an exchange between different forms of energy, a generation of strong field-aligned currents and emissions, and an amplification of magnetic fields. Depending on the conditions in the magnetosphere of the planet/exoplanet and in the flow of magnetized plasma passing it, different numbers of sliding layers with different configurations appear. Some are associated with regions of auroras and possible radio emissions. The search for planetary radio emissions is a current task in the detection of exoplanets.

Orientation and Stability of Asymmetric Magnetic Reconnection X Line

The orientation and stability of the reconnection x line in asymmetric geometry is studied using three-dimensional (3-D) particle-in-cell simulations. We initiate reconnection at the center of a large simulation domain to minimize the boundary effect. The resulting x line has sufficient freedom to develop along an optimal orientation, and it remains laminar. Companion 2-D simulations indicate that this x line orientation maximizes the reconnection rate. The divergence of the nongyrotropic pressure tensor breaks the frozen-in condition, consistent with its 2-D counterpart. We then design 3-D simulations with one dimension being short to fix the x line orientation but long enough to allow the growth of the fastest growing oblique tearing modes. This numerical experiment suggests that reconnection tends to radiate secondary oblique tearing modes if it is externally (globally) forced to proceed along an orientation not favored by the local physics. The development of oblique structure easily leads to turbulence inside small periodic systems.