Weibel instability and structures of magnetic island in anti-parallel collisionless magnetic reconnection

摘要

Two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell simulations are performed to investigate the structures of the out-of-plane magnetic field in magnetic island, which is produced during anti-parallel collisionless magnetic reconnection. Regular structures with alternate positive and negative values of the out-of-plane magnetic field along the x direction are formed in magnetic island. The generation mechanism of such structures is also proposed in this paper, which is due to the Weibel instability excited by the temperature anisotropy in magnetic island.