Paper Title:
Comparative Study of Impulsive Reconnection During Substorms and Flares

Author List:
Bhattacharjee, A., T. Forbes, and Z. W, Ma

Abstract:
Magnetotail and solar coronal plasmas are characterized by very
different plasma parameters and boundary conditions, but they have a few
common features: their Lundquist numbers are very high, and both produce
very thin current sheets and super-Dreicer electric fields during
reconnection. Under such conditions, collisonless effects become
important and it becomes necessary to replace Ohm's law in resistive MHD
with a generalized Ohm's law which includes the Hall current. It is
shown that the inclusion of a generalized Ohm's law provides a natural
explanation for important observational features of substorms and
flares, including impulsive trigger, an X-point geometry, and parallel
electric fields that can produce substantial particle acceleration.
High-resolution simulations will be presented and compared with
observations.

Poster:
No