Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation of magnetic reconnection in Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF)

Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) is a new platform to study fundamental plasma processes in space environments using a controlled manner in laboratory. One scientific object of this device is to study Earth's magnetopause reconnection. During the experiment, a dipole coil is used to generate a magnetic field of the magnetosphere, and four sheath coils are used to generate the magnetic field in the solar wind. A reconnection site with upstream conditions similar to magnetopause reconnection is expected to be detected between the sheath coils and dipole coil. In this paper, we perform a two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation with the boundary and driving conditions designed to model SPERF to study magnetic reconnection in SPERF. Magnetic reconnection is observed during both the growth and decay stages of the driving current in the sheath coils, which are referred to as “push” and “pull” reconnection stages. During the push stage, the plasma conditions in the two inflow regions are asymmetric, and this stage can be used to study magnetopause reconnection; during the pull stage, there are some asymmetric features between the two reconnection outflow regions, and we propose that this stage can be used to study magnetotail reconnection. Our simulation results show the capability for SPERF to produce magnetopause-like and magnetotail-like reconnection geometries.