PARTICLE DYNAMICS, CHAOS, AND ORDER IN THE MAGNETOTAIL

Current sheets are prevalent in space, astrophysical, and laboratory plasmas. They occur in boundary layers between regions of oppositely directed components of magnetic field, typically occupying small spatial regions inside larger systems. A current sheet, however, represents a significant magnetic energy reservoir and can play a critical role in determining the properties of the larger system in which it is embedded. Important physical processes in current sheets include magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration. The charged particles are typically collisionless in space and astrophysical plasmas while those in laboratory plasmas can exhibit a range of collisionality. Copyright 1995 by the American Geophysical Union.