Electron and Ion Heating during Magnetic Reconnection in Weakly Collisional Plasmas

Abstract: Gyrokinetic simulations of magnetic reconnection are presented to investigate plasma heating for strongly magnetized, weakly collisional plasmas. For a low plasma beta case, parallel and perpendicular phase mixing strongly enhance energy dissipation yielding electron heating. Heating occurs for a long time period after a dynamical process of magnetic reconnection ended. For a higher beta case, the ratio of ion to electron dissipation rate increases, suggesting that ion heating (via phase-mixing) may become an important dissipation channel in high beta plasmas.