Towards more realistic full particle simulations of magnetic reconnection: Effects of density jump across a current sheet

M. Fujimoto

ISAS, JAXA

Most of the full particle simulations of magnetic reconnection have benn concentrating on idealized situations in order to learn basic physics of the process. Including more realistic effects, however, does not necessarily mean that such effects would bring only complication that hides the essential features from us in the results. Here, with the magnetopause situation in mind, we perform a full particle simulation of magnetic reconnection with density jump across the current sheet taken into account. The resullts show new features that are not seen in the density-symmetry case, whose comparison with Cluster observations has turned out to be quite successful. This has given us confidence to proceed to a long time run in a large simulation box, whose results imply a possibly fundamental issue that the density asymmetry causes more frequent ejection of small magneitc islands than the density symmetry case.