Formation of Plasmoid Chains in Magnetic Reconnection
Abstract
A detailed numerical study of magnetic reconnection in resistive MHD for very large, previously inaccessible, Lundquist numbers () is reported. Large-aspect-ratio Sweet-Parker current sheets are shown to be unstable to super-Alfv\'enically fast formation of plasmoid (magnetic-island) chains. The plasmoid number scales as and the instability growth rate in the linear stage as , in agreement with the theory by Loureiro et al. [Phys. Plasmas {\bf 14}, 100703 (2007)]. In the nonlinear regime, plasmoids continue to grow faster than they are ejected and completely disrupt the reconnection layer. These results suggest that high-Lundquist-number reconnection is inherently time-dependent and hence call for a substantial revision of the standard Sweet-Parker quasi-stationary picture for .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0903.0542,
title = {Formation of Plasmoid Chains in Magnetic Reconnection},
author = {R. Samtaney and N. F. Loureiro and D. A. Uzdensky and A. A. Schekochihin and S. C. Cowley},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.0542},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett