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Fig. 1 | Earth, Planets and Space

Fig. 1

From: Reconnection and interchange instability in the near magnetotail

Fig. 1

Characteristics of stable and unstable runs in PIC simulations. Characteristics of stable (left column, c, e, g) and unstable runs (right column, d, f, h). a The initial state and b the corresponding entropy function S(x), which are the same for all runs. The following two panels show the magnetic field and current density structure of two runs with m i /m e =400, c for a=3.33 after relaxation into a new equilibrium, and d for a=5 after the onset of reconnection. The third and bottom panels show the characteristic current sheet half-thickness L z and the B z values as function of time, evaluated at the location where B z reaches a local minimum at z=0, near x∼−13, for (e, g) a=2.5 and (f, h) a=5. Modified from Figure two of Liu et al. (2014)

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