THE MAGNETIC-STRUCTURE OF B-NOT-EQUAL-O-RECONNECTION

Magnetic reconnection can he interpreted as a process in which the ele ctromagnetic field is frozen into a four-velocity field in Minkowski s pace. For reconnection to occur the four-velocity held has to be a spe cial type of stagnation flow. Prescribing this type of dow in a finite spatial domain allows the modelling of localized reconnection events and the investigation of examples of reconnection in regions without m agnetic nulls. In the present contribution, we start with a simple twi sted magnetic flux tube. Reconnection occuring along a part of the axi s of the tube results in a structure of the magnetic held which is a s uperposition of a two-dimensional X-type magnetic field well-known fro m stationary 2D reconnection models, and a component resulting from th e magnetic field parallel to the axis. For localized reconnection, the latter component of the magnetic held evolves in a non-trivial way. T his evolution is important for the spatial variation of the parallel e lectric field integrated along the magnetic field lines. The integrate d electric held gives an upper limit for the energy to which particles can he accelerated in a reconnection event and its distribution shows to be localized in very thin structures.