Related papers: Marginally Stable Current Sheets in Collisionless …
The possibility of the existence of quasi-stationary electromagnetic fields in plasma supported by their own self-consistent current follows from Maxwell's equations with field sources. These equations also give rise to a wave equation for…
Recently, magnetic reconnection, where a relativistically hot plasma is confined by a strong magnetic field, has received great attention in relation to astrophysical objects (e.g., pulsar magnetosphere and magnetar). However, reconnection…
We present the first results of three-dimensional (3D) numerical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the onset of magnetic reconnection via the tearing instability in dynamically thinning current sheets in the solar corona. In all our…
Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and magnetic reconnection are ubiquitous in astrophysical environments. In most situations, these processes do not occur in isolation, but interact with each other. This renders a comprehensive theory of these…
We report simulation results for turbulent magnetic reconnection obtained using a newly developed Reynolds-averaged magnetohydrodynamics model. We find that the initial Harris current sheet develops in three ways, depending on the strength…
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…
During magnetic reconnection in collisionless space plasma, the electron fluid decouples from the magnetic field within narrow current layers, and theoretical models for this process can be distinguished in terms of their predicted current…
Plasmoid growth is considered to enhance the rate of magnetic reconnection and is frequently used to explain fast mag netic reconnection in highly conductive (collisionless) plasmas. In strongly magnetized plasmas, the long wavelength…
Turbulence profoundly affects particle transport and plasma heating in many astrophysical plasma environments, from galaxy clusters to the solar corona and solar wind to Earth's magnetosphere. Both fluid and kinetic simulations of plasma…
The spontaneous onset of magnetic reconnection in thin collisionless current sheets is shown to result from a thermal-anisotropy driven magnetic Weibel-mode, generating seed-magnetic field {\sf X}-points in the centre of the current layer.
The magnetotail current sheet configuration determines magnetic reconnection properties that control the substorm onset, one of the most energetic phenomena in the Earth's magnetosphere. The quiet-time current sheet is often approximated as…
Recent progress in understanding the physics of magnetic reconnection is conveniently summarized in terms of a phase diagram which organizes the essential dynamics for a wide variety of applications in heliophysics, laboratory and…
Magnetic reconnection is an important physical process in various explosive phenomena in the universe. In the previous studies, it was found that fast re- connection takes place when the thickness of a current sheet becomes on the order of…
We study the time-dependent formation and evolution of a current sheet (CS) in a magnetized, collisionless, high-beta plasma using hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. An initially tearing-stable Harris sheet is frozen into a…
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…
The nonlinear development of streaming instabilities in the current layers formed during magnetic reconnection with a guide field is explored. Theory and 3-D particle-in-cell simulations reveal two distinct phases. First, the parallel…
We present results from pulsed-power-driven magnetic reconnection experiments, in which we drove two exploding wire arrays in parallel to produce colliding plasma flows with anti-parallel magnetic fields of 1.2$\pm$0.2 T. The experimental…
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…
Recent analytical works on strong magnetized plasma turbulence have hypothesized the existence of a range of scales where the tearing instability may govern the energy cascade. In this paper, we estimate the conditions under which such…
We consider strongly stratified forced turbulence in a plane-parallel layer with helicity and corresponding large-scale dynamo action in the lower part and non-helical turbulence in the upper. The magnetic field is found to develop strongly…