Magnetotail Ion Acceleration in 3‐D Global Hybrid Simulations

Abstract

AbstractParticle injection by magnetotail reconnection plays an important role in the magnetospheric physics, since these particles may be accelerated to high energy and constituent energetic particles in the inner magnetosphere. In this paper, we trace such ion particles from a near‐Earth reconnection region to the inner magnetosphere self‐consistently in a 3‐D global hybrid simulation using ANGIE3D, and demonstrate the important roles of the earthward fast flows in the ion acceleration process in the tail plasma sheet. Although the particles can gain several times of their initial energy from the reconnection X‐line region, a dramatic increase of the ion energy (from a few keV up to a few tens of keV) occurs in a very short period of time due to their encounter with the earthward fast flows. A large portion (≳70%) of the earthward moving particles around the focused reconnection site encounter fast flows and are significantly accelerated. Our results indicate that fast flow electric fields play major roles, as opposed to other common mechanisms such as the adiabatic Betatron and Fermi processes, in ion acceleration from the near‐tail region to the inner magnetosphere. In addition, dipolarization fronts associated with magnetic reconnection also affect the particle acceleration. On the global scale, it is found that particles can encounter the reconnection region first and then return to the fast flows multiple times, and thus the acceleration is through multiple local acceleration processes, leading to particle energy ∼50 keV by reconnection/fast flows in the tail. The global simulation shows that particle acceleration involves multiple regions during their injection into the ring current.