SM020-0016
Perpendicular electron acceleration by the lower-hybrid drift instability

Thursday, 10 December 2020
Poster
Jonathan Ng, University of Maryland College Park; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, College Park, MD, United States, Li J Chen, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Shan Wang, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States and Naoki Bessho, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
Abstract:
Electrons are typically thought be magnetized in the lower-hybrid drift instability. Recent MMS observations of the LHDI within the electron layer of guide-field reconnection, however, indicate that intense LHDI drives non-gyrotropic perpendicular electron heating. We first perform simulations of the LHDI and show that its evolution leads to the formation of electron distributions with core and crescent populations, after which we perform 2- and 3-D kinetic simulations of the LHDI during guide-field reconnection, in order to study the effects of the LHDI on the electron current layer. The simulations demonstrate that LHDI can occur in the electron-scale reconnection layer and that intense LHDI in a non-uniform plasma results in nongyrotropic electron distributions
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