Plasmoid solutions of the Hahm--Kulsrud--Taylor equilibrium model
Abstract
The Hahm--Kulsrud (HK) [T. S. Hahm and R. M. Kulsrud, Phys. Fluids {\bf 28}, 2412 (1985)] solutions for a magnetically sheared plasma slab driven by a resonant periodic boundary perturbation illustrate fully shielded (current sheet) and fully reconnected (magnetic island) responses. On the global scale, reconnection involves solving a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium problem. In systems with a continuous symmetry such MHD equilibria are typically found by solving the Grad--Shafranov equation, and in slab geometry the elliptic operator in this equation is the 2-D Laplacian. Thus, assuming appropriate pressure and poloidal current profiles, a conformal mapping method can be used to transform one solution into another with different boundary conditions, giving a continuous sequence of solutions in the form of partially reconnected magnetic islands (plasmoids) separated by Syrovatsky current sheets. The two HK solutions appear as special cases.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1304.6273,
title = {Plasmoid solutions of the Hahm--Kulsrud--Taylor equilibrium model},
author = {R. L. Dewar and A. Bhattacharjee and R. M. Kulsrud and A. M. Wright},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.6273},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
8 pages, 11 figures