Related papers: Formation of plasmoid chains and fast magnetic rec…
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…
Magnetohydrodynamic simulations have shown that a non-unique critical Lundquist number $S_c$ exists, hovering around $S_c \sim 10^4$, above which threshold Sweet-Parker type stationary reconnecting configurations become unstable to a fast…
Magnetic reconnection and non-thermal particle distributions associated with current-driven instabilities are investigated by means of resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations combined with relativistic test particle methods. We…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous phenomenon for magnetized plasmas and leads to the rapid reconfiguration of magnetic field lines. During reconnection events, plasma is heated and accelerated until the magnetic field lines enclose and…
Results from 2.5D and 3D studies of the onset and development of the tearing instability are presented, using high fidelity resistive MHD simulations. A limited parameter study of the strength of the reconnecting field (or shear angle) was…
The manner in which the rate of magnetic reconnection scales with the Lundquist number in realistic three-dimensional (3D) geometries is still an unsolved problem. It has been demonstrated that in 2D rapid non-linear tearing allows the…
The plasmoid instability in evolving current sheets has been widely studied due to its effects on the disruption of current sheets, the formation of plasmoids, and the resultant fast magnetic reconnection. In this Letter, we study the role…
We investigate the impact of turbulence on magnetic reconnection through high-resolution 3D magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations, spanning Lundquist numbers from $S=10^3$ to $10^6$. Building on Lazarian and Vishniac's (1999) theory,…
Magnetic reconnection can explosively release magnetic energy when opposing magnetic fields merge and annihilate through a current sheet, driving plasma jets and accelerating non-thermal particle populations to high energy, in plasmas…
This paper studies the growth rate of reconnection instabilities in thin current sheets in the presence of both resistivity and viscosity. In a previous paper, Pucci and Velli (2014), it was argued that at sufficiently high Lundquist number…
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 formation of plasmoid chains is explored for the first time within the context of the Taylor problem, in which magnetic reconnection is driven by a small amplitude boundary perturbation in a tearing-stable slab plasma equilibrium.…
Fast reconnection in magnetically dominated plasmas is widely invoked in models of dissipation in pulsar winds, gamma-ray flares in the Crab nebula, and to explain the radio nanoshots of pulsars. When current sheets evolve reaching a…
In an idealized system where four current channels interact in a two-dimensional periodic setting, we follow the detailed evolution of current sheets (CSs) forming in between the channels, as a result of a large-scale merging. A central…
We consider a magnetic configuration consisting of an arcade structure and a detached plasmoid, resulting from a magnetic reconnection process, as is typically found in connection with solar flares. We study spontaneous current…
The short timescale of the solar flare reconnection process has long proved to be a puzzle. Recent studies suggest the importance of the formation of plasmoids in the reconnecting current sheet, with quantifying the aspect ratio of the…
In this paper we present a two-dimensional, time dependent, numerical simulation of a reconnection current layer in incompressible resistive magnetohydrodynamics with uniform resistivity in the limit of very large Lundquist numbers. We use…
As a key to undertanding the basic mechanism for fast reconnection in solar flares, plasmoid-induced-reconnection and fractal reconnection are proposed and examined. We first briefly summarize recent solar observations that give us hints on…
We numerically study magnetic reconnection on different spatial scales and at different heights in the weakly ionized plasma of the low solar atmosphere (around $300-800$~km above the solar surface) within a reactive 2.5 D multi-fluid…
Forced magnetic reconnection is triggered by external perturbations, which are ubiquitous in the solar corona. This process plays a crucial role in the energy release during solar transient events, which are often associated with electric…