Kinetic effects on the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in ion-to-magnetohydrodynamic scale transverse velocity shear layers: Particle simulations

Magnetic Reconnection Inside a Flux Rope Induced by Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices

On 5 May 2017, MMS observed a crater-type flux rope on the dawnside tailward magnetopause with fluctuations. The boundary-normal analysis shows that the fluctuations can be attributed to nonlinear Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) waves. Reconnection signatures such as flow reversals and Joule dissipation were identified at the leading and trailing edges of the flux rope. In particular, strong northward electron jets observed at the trailing edge indicated midlatitude reconnection associated with the 3-D structure of the KH vortex. The scale size of the flux rope, together with reconnection signatures, strongly supports the interpretation that the flux rope was generated locally by KH vortex-induced reconnection. The center of the flux rope also displayed signatures of guide-field reconnection (out-of-plane electron jets, parallel electron heating, and Joule dissipation). These signatures indicate that an interface between two interlinked flux tubes was undergoing interaction, causing a local magnetic depression, resulting in an M-shaped crater flux rope, as supported by reconstruction.

Impact of an initial random magnetic field on the evolution of two-dimensional shearless mixing layers

The impact of an initial random magnetic field on the temporal evolution of a two-dimensional incompressible turbulent shearless mixing layer is investigated using direct numerical simulation. Different intensities of the initial random magnetic field are imposed with uniform probability distribution on an identical flow field. The initial flow field condition is the turbulent shearless mixing layer with different kinetic energy ratio (E_{H}/E_{L}=6.7) and identical integral length scale. Simulations are carried out in a moderate magnetic Reynolds number, which causes a two-way interaction between the velocity and magnetic fields. In order to analyze the effect of the initial random magnetic field on the mixing characteristics, the intermittency inside the mixing layer and the mixing evolution parameters are investigated. It is found that with small initial magnetic field intensity, the intermittency in both large and small scales are larger than those values in hydrodynamic flow. However, increasing the intensity of the initial magnetic field reduces the intermittency in the mixing region to lower values compared to the hydrodynamic flow. The mixing layer growth rate and the mixing efficiency both show reduction by increasing the initial magnetic field intensity, which is attributed to the reduction of the averaged Reynolds number of both homogenous isotropic turbulent regions due to the suppressing effect of the Lorentz force on the velocity fields of these regions.