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Register a new userMagnetic field relaxation and current sheets in an ideal plasma
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We investigate the existence of magnetohydrostatic equilibria for topologically complex magnetic fields. The approach employed is to perform ideal numerical relaxation experiments. We use a newly-developed Lagrangian relaxation scheme that exactly preserves the magnetic field topology during the relaxation. Our configurations include both twisted and sheared fields, of which some fall into the category for which Parker (1972) predicted no force-free equilibrium. The first class of field considered contains no magnetic null points, and field lines connect between two perfectly conducting plates. In these cases we observe only resolved current layers of finite thickness. In further numerical experiments we confirm that magnetic null points are loci of singular currents.
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The magnetic topology and field line random walk properties of a nanoflare-heated and magnetically confined corona are investigated in the reduced magnetohydrodynamic regime. Field lines originating from current sheets form coherent structures, called Current Sheet Connected (CSC) regions, extended around them. CSC field line random walk is strongly anisotropic, with preferential diffusion along the current sheets in-plane length. CSC field line random walk properties remain similar to those of the entire ensemble but exhibit enhanced mean square displacements and separations due to the stronger magnetic field intensities in CSC regions. The implications for particle acceleration and heat transport in the solar corona and wind, and for solar moss formation are discussed.
We investigate the dynamical evolution of magnetic fields in closed regions of solar and stellar coronae. To understand under which conditions current sheets form, we examine dissipative and ideal reduced magnetohydrodynamic models in cartesian geometry, where two magnetic field components are present: the strong guide field $B_0$, extended along the axial direction, and the dynamical orthogonal field $mathbf{b}$. Magnetic field lines thread the system along the axial direction, that spans the length $L$, and are line-tied at the top and bottom plates. The magnetic field $b$ initially has only large scales, with its gradient (current) length-scale of order $ell_b$. We identify the magnetic intensity threshold $b/B_0 sim ell_b/L$. For values of $b$ below this threshold, field-line tension inhibits the formation of current sheets, while above the threshold they form quickly on fast ideal timescales. In the ideal case, above the magnetic threshold, we show that current sheets thickness decreases in time until it becomes smaller than the grid resolution, with the analyticity strip width $delta$ decreasing at least exponentially, after which the simulations become under-resolved.
We present two-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations of line-tied asymmetric magnetic reconnection in the context of solar flare and coronal mass ejection current sheets. The reconnection process is made asymmetric along the inflow direction by allowing the initial upstream magnetic field strengths and densities to differ, and along the outflow direction by placing the initial perturbation near a conducting wall boundary that represents the photosphere. When the upstream magnetic fields are asymmetric, the post-flare loop structure is distorted into a characteristic skewed candle flame shape. The simulations can thus be used to provide constraints on the reconnection asymmetry in post-flare loops. More hard X-ray emission is expected to occur at the footpoint on the weak magnetic field side because energetic particles are more likely to escape the magnetic mirror there than at the strong magnetic field footpoint. The footpoint on the weak magnetic field side is predicted to move more quickly because of the requirement in two dimensions that equal amounts of flux must be reconnected from each upstream region. The X-line drifts away from the conducting wall in all simulations with asymmetric outflow and into the strong magnetic field region during most of the simulations with asymmetric inflow. There is net plasma flow across the X-line for both the inflow and outflow directions. The reconnection exhaust directed away from the obstructing wall is significantly faster than the exhaust directed towards it. The asymmetric inflow condition allows net vorticity in the rising outflow plasmoid which would appear as rolling motions about the flux rope axis.
We present the first study of the formation and dissipation of current sheets at electron scales in a wave-driven, weakly collisional, 3D kinetic turbulence simulation. We investigate the relative importance of dissipation associated with collisionless damping via resonant wave-particle interactions versus dissipation in small-scale current sheets in weakly collisional plasma turbulence. Current sheets form self-consistently from the wave-driven turbulence, and their filling fraction is well correlated to the electron heating rate. However, the weakly collisional nature of the simulation necessarily implies that the current sheets are not significantly dissipated via Ohmic dissipation. Rather, collisionless damping via the Landau resonance with the electrons is sufficient to account for the measured heating as a function of scale in the simulation, without the need for significant Ohmic dissipation. This finding suggests the possibility that the dissipation of the current sheets is governed by resonant wave-particle interactions and that the locations of current sheets correspond spatially to regions of enhanced heating.
Magnetic reconnection is thought to be the dynamical mechanism underlying many explosive phenomena observed both in space and in the laboratory, though the question of how fast magnetic reconnection is triggered in such high Lundquist ($S$) number plasmas has remained elusive. It has been well established that reconnection can develop over timescales faster than those predicted traditionally once kinetic scales are reached. It has also been shown that, within the framework of resistive Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), fast reconnection is achieved for thin enough sheets via the onset of the so-called plasmoid instability. The latter was discovered in studies specifically devoted to the Sweet-Parker current sheet, either as an initial condition or an apparent transient state developing in nonlinear studies. On the other hand, a fast tearing instability can grow on an ideal, i.e., $S$-independent, timescale (dubbed ideal tearing) within current sheets whose aspect ratio scales with the macroscopic Lundquist number as $L/asim S^{1/3}$ -- much smaller than the Sweet-Parker one -- suggesting a new way to approach to the initiation of fast reconnection in collapsing current configurations. Here we present an overview of what we have called ideal tearing in resistive MHD, and discuss how the same reasoning can be extended to other plasma models commonly used that include electron inertia and kinetic effects. We then discuss a scenario for the onset of ideal fast reconnection via collapsing current sheets and describe a quantitative model for the interpretation of the nonlinear evolution of ideally unstable sheets in two dimensions.
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