The role of electron dissipation on the rate of collisionless magnetic reconnection

Particle simulations and analytic arguments are presented to demonstrate that the electron dissipation region, including the physics which breaks the frozen-in condition, does not affect the rate of reconnection in collisionless plasma. The result is a general consequence of the quadratic nature of the dispersion character of whistler waves, which control the plasma dynamics at small scales. The reconnection rate is instead controlled by the dynamics at length scales much greater than the electron dissipation region.