Abstract
This study aims at analyzing the ions dynamics from fully kinetic simulations of symmetric magnetic reconnection in typical laboratory plasma configurations. Simulations are performed using the massively parallel fully-kinetic implicit-moment Particle-in-Cell code iPIC3D. A not-force-free unbalanced profile is adopted across the current sheet to significantly accelerate the reconnection process and at the same time allow for a free choice of the initial setup. A set of nine simulations with reduced mass ratio mr = 512 has been performed by permuting three significant values of magnetic field (B = 200G, 800G, 5000G), and electron temperatures (Te = 0:5;3;10 eV). The initial ion temperature and density are kept constant at Ti =0:0215 eV (room temperature) and 1019 m 3. The flow velocity of the ions outside the reconnection region has been analyzed, showing that the reconnection process can efficiently accelerate ions up to velocities comparable with the Alfven velocity vA even in laboratory conditions. Losses channels limit ion acceleration to 0.6- 0.7vA, which is still relevant for many applications. Finally, the configuration resulting in the most promising acceleration has been simulated with realistic mass ratio, 1836me. Interestingly, this simulation reveals the formation of a series of discontinuities over the reconnection outflow partially recalling the shock structures found in relativistic simulations ([2, 3]), as well as new remarkable features (figure 1) which require further investigation.