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Two-Stage Bulk Electron Heating in the Diffusion Region of Anti-Parallel Symmetric Reconnection

Electron bulk energization in the diffusion region during anti-parallel symmetric reconnection entails two stages. First, the inflowing electrons are adiabatically trapped and energized by an ambipolar parallel electric field. Next, the electrons gain energy from the reconnection electric field as they undergo meandering motion. These collisionless mechanisms have been decribed previously, and they lead to highly-structured electron velocity distributions. Nevertheless, a simplified control-volume analysis gives estimates for how the net effective heating scales with the upstream plasma conditions in agreement with fully kinetic simulations and spacecraft observations.