Related papers: Fast Reconnection in a Two-Stage Process
We discuss the model of magnetic field reconnection in the presence of turbulence introduced by us approximately ten years ago. The model does not require any plasma effects to be involved in order to make the reconnection fast. In fact, it…
Our understanding of magnetic reconnection in resistive magnetohydrodynamics has gone through a fundamental change in recent years. The conventional wisdom is that magnetic reconnection mediated by resistivity is slow in laminar high…
Magnetic reconnection is invoked as one of the primary mechanisms to produce energetic particles. We employ large-scale three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell simulations of reconnection in magnetically-dominated ($\sigma=10$) pair plasmas…
This work presents a 2.5-dimensional simulation study of the instability of current-sheets located in a medium with a strong density variation along the current layer. The initial force-free configuration is observed to undergo a two-stage…
The main subject of my talk is the question: in what kind of astrophysical systems magnetic reconnection is interesting and/or important? To address this question, I first put forward three general criteria for selecting the relevant…
Magnetic reconnection in strongly magnetized astrophysical plasma environments is believed to be the primary process for fast energy release and particle energization. Currently there is strong interest in relativistic magnetic…
The reconnection rate is obtained for the simplest case of 2D symmetric reconnection in an incompressible plasma. In the short note (Erkaev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett.,84, 1455 (2000)), the reconnection rate is found by matching the outer…
We investigate a model of turbulent magnetic reconnection introduced by Higashimori, Yokoi and Hoshino (Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 255001) and show that the classic two-dimensional, steady-state Sweet-Parker and Petschek reconnection solutions…
Although magnetic reconnection takes place in three-dimensional space, reconnection theory has focused on two-dimensional models for more than sixty years. Well-posed three-dimensional mathematics associated with the theory of fluid mixing…
Magnetic field embedded in a perfectly conducting fluid preserves its topology for all time. Although ionized astrophysical objects, like stars and galactic disks, are almost perfectly conducting, they show indications of changes in…
We conduct a multiparametric study of driven magnetic reconnection relevant to recent experiments on colliding magnetized laser produced plasmas using particle-in-cell simulations. Varying the background plasma density, plasma resistivity,…
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…
Using the formulation of relativistic reconnection by Lyutikov & Uzdensky (2002) we estimate the upper possible rates of reconnection in pulsar winds using Bohm prescription for resistivity. We find that the velocity of plasma inflow into…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process in a laboratory, magnetospheric, solar and astrophysical plasma, whereby magnetic energy is converted into heat, bulk kinetic energy and fast particle energy. Its nature in two dimensions is…
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…
Fast particles are accelerated in astrophysical environments by a variety of processes. Acceleration in reconnection sites has attracted the attention of researchers recently. In this letter we analyze the energy distribution evolution of…
Magnetic Reconnection is an efficient and fast acceleration mechanism by means of direct electric field acceleration parallel to the magnetic field. Thus, acceleration of particles in reconnection regions is a very important topic in plasma…
A new path for the generation of a sub-ion scale cascade in collisionless plasma turbulence, triggered by magnetic reconnection, is uncovered by means of high-resolution two-dimensional hybrid-kinetic simulations employing two complementary…
Null and X-points are not themselves directly important to magnetic reconnection because distinguishable field lines do not approach them closely. Even in a collision-free plasma, magnetic field lines that approach each other on a scale…
Simulations suggest collisionless steady-state magnetic reconnection of Harris-type current sheets proceeds with a rate of order 0.1, independent of dissipation mechanism. We argue this long-standing puzzle is a result of constraints at the…