Whistler Mode Waves in Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

A 2½-dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation code is used to investigate the wave phenomena in the plasma sheet of collisionless magnetic reconnection. The results show that these waves have the following characteristics: they are right-hand circularity polarized, with propagation direction nearly parallel to local magnetic field, and frequency between 0.07 and 0.17 times of local electron cyclotron frequency. Therefore we conclude that such waves are Whistler waves, and their possible excitation mechanisms are also discussed.