Topological Analysis of Magnetic Reconnection in Kinetic Plasma Simulations
Abstract
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous plasma process in which oppositely directed magnetic field lines break and rejoin, resulting in a change of the magnetic field topology. Reconnection generates magnetic islands: regions enclosed by magnetic field lines and separated by reconnection points. Proper identification of these features is important to understand particle acceleration and overall behavior of plasma. We present a contour-tree based visualization for robust and objective identification of islands and reconnection points in two-dimensional (2D) magnetic reconnection simulations. The application of this visualization to a simple simulation has revealed a physical phenomenon previously not reported, resulting in a more comprehensive understanding of magnetic reconnection.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2010.01959,
title = {Topological Analysis of Magnetic Reconnection in Kinetic Plasma Simulations},
author = {Divya Banesh and Li-Ta Lo and Patrick Kilian and Fan Guo and Bernd Hamann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.01959},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
To to published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2020