Events at Physics |
In the nonrelativistic regime studied, energy dissipation is seen to be strongly intermittent, concentrating on electron-scale current sheets. A few of these current sheets exhibit signatures of electron-only reconnection.
The particle energy probability density function in the relativistic regime displays a nonthermal tail of ultrarelativistic particles that goes from power-law-like to log-normal as the guide field is increased. We propose that this can be understood in terms of the acceleration mechanism that dominates in each case. Also noteworthy is the observed intermittency in the spatial distribution of ultrarelativistic particles.