Proton Acceleration near an X‐Type Magnetic Reconnection Region

We investigate the behavior of protons near an X-type magnetic reconnection region by numerical simulations. The magnetic field is taken to be hyperbolic and time stationary with a uniform electric field perpendicular to the magnetic field. We also study the effects of the magnetic field along the uniform electric field. We found from many parametric runs that the energy spectrum of accelerated protons near an X-type magnetic reconnection region is universal with a power-law spectrum E -γ , where the power-law index γ is about 2.0-2.2. The acceleration time of protons with the energy range of 1-20 MeV is very rapid and within ~10 2 ω −1 ci , which is much less than 1 s for solar flare plasmas. We compare our results with some observations of solar flares.