PARTICLE-ACCELERATION IN RECONNECTING CURRENT SHEETS

We study motions of charged particles in reconnecting current sheets (CS) which have both transverse (perpendicular to the current sheet plane) and longitudinal (parallel to the electric current inside the sheet) components of the magnetic field. Such CS, called non-neutral, are formed in regions of magnetic field line reconnection in the solar atmosphere. We develop an analytical technique which allows us to reproduce previous results concerning the influence of transverse fields on particle motion and acceleration. This technique also allows us to evaluate the effect of the longitudinal field. The latter increases considerably the efficiency of particle acceleration in CS. The energizing of electrons during the main phase of solar flares can be interpreted as their acceleration in non-neutral CS.