Related papers: Non-linear Tearing of 3D Null Point Current Sheets
This paper discusses the transition to fast growth of the tearing instability in thin current sheets in the collisionless limit where electron inertia drives the reconnection process. It has been previously suggested that in resistive MHD…
Magnetic reconnection in laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas is often invoked to explain explosive energy release and particle acceleration. However, the timescales involved in classical models within the macroscopic MHD regime are…
The recent realization that Sweet-Parker current sheets are violently unstable to the secondary tearing (plasmoid) instability implies that such current sheets cannot occur in real systems. This suggests that, in order to understand the…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the properties of magnetic reconnection at a 3D null point, with respect to their dependence on the symmetry of the magnetic field around the null. In particular we examine the rate of flux transport…
Magnetic reconnection is believed to be the driver of many explosive phenomena in Astrophysics, from solar to gamma-ray flares in magnetars and in the Crab nebula. However, reconnection rates from classic MHD models are far too slow to…
Sweet-Parker current sheets in high Lundquist number plasmas are unstable to tearing, suggesting they will not form in physical systems. Understanding magnetic reconnection thus requires study of the stability of a current sheet as it…
In this work the dynamic magnetic field within a tearing-unstable three-dimensional (3D) current sheet about a magnetic null point is described in detail. We focus on the evolution of the magnetic null points and flux ropes that are formed…
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory and simulations have shown that reconnection is triggered via a fast "ideal" tearing instability in current sheets whose inverse aspect ratio decreases to $a/L\sim S^{-1/3}$, with $S$ is the Lundquist number…
Magnetic reconnection provides the primary source for explosive energy release, plasma heating and particle acceleration in many astrophysical environments. The last years witnessed a revival of interest in the MHD tearing instability as a…
In many astrophysical environments the plasma is only partially ionized, and therefore the interaction of charged and neutral particles may alter both the triggering of reconnection and its subsequent dynamical evolution. We derive the…
It is well known that the nonlinear evolution of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence generates current sheets. In the solar wind turbulence, current sheets are frequently observed and they are believed to be an important pathway for the…
We use 2.5D Magnetohydrodynamic simulations to investigate the spectral signatures of the nonlinear disruption of a tearing unstable current sheet via the generation of multiple secondary current sheets and magnetic islands. During the…
Plasmoid instability accelerates reconnection in collisional plasmas by transforming a laminar reconnection layer into numerous plasmoids connected by secondary current sheets in two dimensions (2D) and by fostering self-generated turbulent…
Tearing instability, also known as plasmoid instability, is an effective mechanism to speed up magnetic reconnection process, working in a wide range of magnetized plasma systems with different spatial scales, ionization degrees, and…
Kinetic simulations have demonstrated that three-dimensional reconnection in collisionless regimes proceeds through the formation and interaction of magnetic flux ropes, which are generated due to the growth of tearing instabilities at…
Magnetic reconnection in naturally occurring and laboratory settings often begins locally and elongates, or spreads, in the direction perpendicular to the plane of reconnection. Previous work has largely focused on current sheets with a…
Non-collisional current sheets that form during the nonlinear development of magnetic reconnection are characterized by a small thickness, of the order of the electron skin depth. They can become unstable to the formation of plasmoids,…
Classical MHD reconnection theories, both the stationary Sweet-Parker model and the tearing instability, are known to provide rates which are too slow to explain the observations. However, a recent analysis has shown that there exists a…
We study two dimensional turbulent magnetic reconnection in a compressible fluid in the gas pressure dominated limit. We use open boundary conditions and start from a Harris current sheet configuration with a uniform total pressure. A small…
Magnetic reconnection in an antiparallel uniform Harris current sheet equilibrium, which is initially perturbed by a region of enhanced resistivity limited in all three dimensions, is investigated through compressible magnetohydrodynamic…