Flux pileup in collisionless magnetic reconnection: bursty interaction of large flux ropes

Using fully kinetic simulations of the island coalescence problem for a range of system sizes greatly exceeding kinetic scales, the phenomenon of flux pileup in the collisionless regime is demonstrated. While small islands on the scale of λ ≤ 5 ion inertial length (d(i)) coalesce rapidly and do not support significant flux pileup, coalescence of larger islands is characterized by large flux pileup and a weaker time averaged reconnection rate that scales as √(d(i)/λ) while the peak rate remains nearly independent of island size. For the largest islands (λ = 100d(i)), reconnection is bursty and nearly shuts off after the first bounce, reconnecting ~20% of the available flux.