Finding reconnection lines and flux rope axes via local coordinates in global ion-kinetic magnetospheric simulations

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is a crucially important process for energy conversion in plasma physics, with the substorm cycle of Earth's magnetosphere and solar flares being prime examples. While 2D models have been widely applied to study reconnection, investigating reconnection in 3D is still, in many aspects, an open problem. Finding sites of magnetic reconnection in a 3D setting is not a trivial task, with several approaches, from topological skeletons to Lorentz transformations, having been proposed to tackle the issue. This work presents a complementary method for quasi-2D structures in 3D settings by noting that the magnetic field structures near reconnection lines exhibit 2D features that can be identified in a suitably chosen local coordinate system. We present applications of this method to a hybrid-Vlasov Vlasiator simulation of Earth's magnetosphere, showing the complex magnetic topologies created by reconnection for simulations dominated by quasi-2D reconnection. We also quantify the dimensionalities of magnetic field structures in the simulation to justify the use of such coordinate systems.