Energy transfer and dissipation of electron current layer during anti-parallel magnetic reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is often considered to be the most fundamental mechanism for the release of magnetic energy in various plasma systems. Electron current layer (ECL) in the diffusion region plays an important role on energy dispassion during collisionless magnetic reconnection. ECL splits into two sublayers and is maintained at the electron inertial scale, not long after the triggering of anti-parallel magnetic reconnection. By performing 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations with high-resolution grids, we investigate the energy transfer and dissipation of electron current layer during anti-parallel magnetic reconnection. Starting from the energy equation of the two-fluid model, we examine the energy transfer and transports in the vicinity of the ECL through a point-by-point analysis of heating and acceleration, and obtain a new image of the energy conversion in the ECL sublayers. In this work, instead of determining the overall energy budget in a fixed-box, we rather chose to distinguish the diffusion into multiple variational regions to calculate the transfer of energy as the reconnection progressed. By combining calculations based on macroscopic energy equations and analysis of phase space electrodynamics, we find the mechanism of electron thermalization and acceleration in the diffusion region during anti-parallel magnetic reconnection.