Magnetic Reconnection near the Dreicer Limit

主要研究员（PI）将对等离子体中弱碰撞重联的探索不足和重要制度进行全面的理论研究，库仑碰撞发挥了作用，但重联电场与逃逸电子的Dreicer极限相当或更大。这些结果将有直接的科学应用，以描述在太阳日冕和过渡区的重联过程。PI旨在量化这种重连的实际后果，如体等离子体加热和粒子加速，使用自洽建模和最先进的，完全动力学，粒子在细胞模拟与蒙特-卡罗处理的库仑碰撞，以提供相关物理的第一原理描述。PI指出，这项研究将在等离子体物理的各种子领域中具有广泛的应用。该项目的教育目标包括培养一名重联物理学、千万亿次计算和科学可视化方面的博士后研究人员。此外，PI的雇主SciberQuest公司，与圣地亚哥超级计算机中心的实习项目“高中生研究经验”（REHS）保持着持续的合作关系。作为该项目的一部分，PI将通过REHS计划每年指导两名学生。

The Principal Investigator (PI) will perform a comprehensive theoretical study of the poorly explored and important regime of weakly collisional reconnection in plasmas, where Coulomb collisions play a role, but where reconnection electric fields are comparable to, or larger than, the Dreicer limit for runaway electrons. These results will have direct scientific application to describing reconnection processes in the solar corona and transition region. The PI intends to quantify the practical consequences of such reconnection, such as bulk plasma heating and particle acceleration, using self-consistent modeling and state-of-the-art, fully kinetic, particle-in-cell simulations with a Monte-Carlo treatment of the Coulomb collisions, in order to provide a first-principles description of the relevant physics. The PI notes that this research will have widespread applications in a variety of sub-fields of plasma physics. This project's educational objectives include the training of a postdoctoral researcher in reconnection physics, petascale computing, and scientific visualization. In addition, the PI's employer, SciberQuest, Inc., has an ongoing partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center's internship program entitled "Research Experience for High School Students" (REHS). As part of this project, the PI will mentor two students per year through the REHS program.