Using the maximum entropy distribution to describe electrons in reconnecting current sheets

Jonathan Ng, Ammar Hakim, A. Bhattacharjee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Particle distributions in weakly collisional environments such as the magnetosphere have been observed to show deviations from the Maxwellian distribution. These can often be reproduced in kinetic simulations, but fluid models, which are used in global simulations of the magnetosphere, do not necessarily capture any of this. We apply the maximum entropy fluid closure of Levermore, which leads to well posed moment equations, to reconstruct particle distributions from a kinetic simulation in a reconnection region. Our results show that without information other than the moments, the model can reproduce the general structure of the distributions but not all of the finer details. The advantages of the closure over the traditional Grad closure are also discussed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number082113
JournalPhysics of Plasmas
Volume25
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1 2018

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Condensed Matter Physics

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