Related papers: Quantifying three dimensional reconnection in frag…
The rate of magnetic reconnection is of the utmost importance in a variety of processes because it controls, for example, the rate energy is released in solar flares, the speed of the Dungey convection cycle in Earth's magnetosphere, and…
The variations of the 3-D coronal magnetic fields associated with the X3.4-class flare of active region 10930 are studied in this paper. The coronal magnetic field data are reconstructed from the photospheric vector magnetograms obtained by…
The recent observations of Singh et al. (2012) have shown multiple plasma ejections and the intermittent nature of magnetic reconnection in the solar chromosphere, highlighting the need for fast reconnection to occur in highly collisional…
The braiding of the solar coronal magnetic field via photospheric motions - with subsequent relaxation and magnetic reconnection -- is one of the most widely debated ideas of solar physics. We readdress the theory in the light of…
Magnetic reconnection occurs when two plasmas having co-planar but anti-parallel magnetic fields meet. At the contact point, the field is locally annihilated and the magnetic energy can be released into the surrounding plasma. Theory and…
Current sheets are essential for energy dissipation in the solar corona, in particular by enabling magnetic reconnection. Unfortunately, sufficiently thin current sheets cannot be resolved observationally and the theory of their formation…
The process of magnetic reconnection when studied in Nature or when modeled in 3D simulations differs in one key way from the standard 2D paradigmatic cartoon: it is accompanied by much fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields and plasma…
Solar flares are one of the most energetic events in the solar atmosphere. It is widely accepted that flares are powered by magnetic reconnection in the corona. An eruptive flare is usually accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, both of…
Coronal magnetic field may be characterized by how its field lines interconnect regions of opposing photospheric flux -- its connectivity. Connectivity can be quantified as the net flux connecting pairs of opposing regions, once such…
When magnetic field in the solar convection zone buoyantly rises to pierce the visible solar surface (photosphere), the atmosphere (corona) above this surface must respond in some way. One response of the coronal field to photospheric…
We point out that a conventional construction placed upon observations of accreting black holes, in which their nonthermal X-ray spectra are produced by inverse comptonization in a coronal plasma, suggests that the plasma is marginally…
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 interplay between kinetic and macroscopic scales during magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic island coalescence in the strongly-magnetized, relativistic pair plasma regime. For large…
In high-Lundquist-number plasmas, reconnection proceeds via onset of tearing, followed by a nonlinear phase during which plasmoids continuously form, merge, and are ejected from the current sheet (CS). This process is understood in fully…
Magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma process associated with a rapid dissipation of magnetic energy, is believed to power many disruptive phenomena in laboratory plasma devices, the Earth magnetosphere, and the solar corona.…
Magnetic reconnection, breaking and reorganization of magnetic field topology, is a fundamental process for rapid release of magnetic energy into plasma particles that occurs pervasively throughout the universe. In most natural…
A mechanism for explosive magnetic reconnection is investigated by analyzing the nonlinear evolution of a collisionless tearing mode in a two-fluid model that includes the effects of electron inertia and temperature. These effects…
Magnetic reconnection at the interface between coronal holes and loops, so-called interchange reconnection, can release the hotter, denser plasma from magnetically confined regions into the heliosphere, contributing to the formation of the…
The magnetosphere of a rotating pulsar naturally develops a current sheet beyond the light cylinder (LC). Magnetic reconnection in this current sheet inevitably dissipates a nontrivial fraction of the pulsar spin-down power within a few LC…
Magnetic field-line reconnection is a universal plasma process responsible for the conversion of magnetic field energy to the plasma heating and charged particle acceleration. Solar flares and Earth's magnetospheric substorms are two most…