Revisiting the MRX Electron Current Sheet Width with Semi-Collisional Kinetic Simulations at Hydrogen Mass Ratio

Abstract

For over eighteen years, the electron current sheet measured in the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) has stood a factor of 2--5 wider than predicted by MRX-like kinetic simulations, and the measured electron force balance has not closed with the classical terms alone. As a consequence, the dominant nonideal terms responsible for breaking the frozen-in condition have remained unexplained. Here, two-dimensional kinetic simulations with binary Coulomb collisions are performed in a cylindrical geometry representative of MRX, at the realistic hydrogen mass ratio $m_i/m_e = 1836$ and at MRX-relevant collisionality. For the first time, these simulations reproduce the measured electron current sheet half-width. The simulated value, $δ_{BT} = 0.744 \pm 0.054$~cm or $6.26 \pm 0.45$ electron skin depths ($d_e$), lies within the experimental range of 5.5--7.5~$d_e$. The electron force balance closes through the classical channels alone: the pressure-tensor divergence supports 76\% of the nonideal electric field and collisional friction the remainder. The historical force-balance deficit reappears only when the simulated layer is sampled at the experimental 3~cm outflow resolution, suggesting that the deficit reflects probe resolution rather than anomalous dissipation. Beyond this reproduction, an analytic model of the layer width is developed that orders the meandering electrons by the coherence of their orbits against collisions. In this model, the Dreicer ratio $E_D/|E_y|$ selects the electrons whose current-carrying motion survives, and the resulting width prediction brackets the measured values across a wide collisionality scan. A discrepancy remains in the width normalized to the local electron gyroradius ($ρ_e$), whose measured value lies a factor of 3--6 above both the model and the simulations.