Numerical analysis of three-dimensional magnetopause-like reconnection properties by Hall MHD simulation for SPERF-AREX

Abstract

The ground-based device, the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF), is established for experimentally simulating magnetosphere plasma processes, with one of its major components, asymmetric reconnection experiment (AREX), for three-dimensional physics relevant to dayside asymmetric magnetopause reconnection. As an outstanding property of fast magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasmas, the Hall effect and its geometric features can be experimentally investigated in SPERF-AREX with various magnetic configurations related to different driven scenarios for simulating interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions. In this work, the Hall effect and its geometric characteristics in such proposed experiments are numerically studied based on a Hall MHD model. The simulation results reveal that in the X-line geometry relevant to southward IMFs, the Hall field features in cross section perpendicular to the X-line are mostly analogous to typical two-dimensional Hall quadrupole structures, clearly an “anti-parallel reconnection” feature. In the separator (A-B null-line) geometry relevant to arbitrary IMF orientations, along the separator between magnetic nulls, the magnetic field configuration near a magnetic null also demonstrates the typical quadrupolar pattern. However, the pattern is distorted away (>10di, here di=c/ωpi is the ion inertial length) from the nulls, in a way similar to that in “component reconnection.” Furthermore, the Hall effect induces a dawn-dusk asymmetry for both the X-line and the separator geometries.