Mixing of the electron distribution function in nonlinear 2D magnetic reconnection

The role played by the conservation of the generalized magnetic linking conditions in the nonlinear evolution of the two-dimensional collisionless, magnetic field reconnection is investigated in the framework of a drift-kinetic description of the electron response. The time-evolution of the electron distribution function at fixed parallel canonical momentum allows us to establish a clear analogy between the fluid and the kinetic regimes of the collisionless reconnection instability in terms of the advection and mixing of Lagrangian invariants.