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Related papers: Plasma sheet structure in the magnetotail: kinetic…

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Magnetic reconnection, a plasma process converting magnetic energy to particle kinetic energy, is often invoked to explain magnetic energy releases powering high-energy flares in astrophysical sources including pulsar wind nebulae and black…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-12-17 Gregory R. Werner , Dmitri A. Uzdensky

Energy conversion via reconnecting current sheets is common in space and astrophysical plasmas. Frequently, current sheets disrupt at multiple reconnection sites, leading to the formation of plasmoid structures between sites, which might…

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-03-23 Dmitri A. Uzdensky , Nuno F. Loureiro

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…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2016-12-21 S. Landi , E. Papini , L. Del Zanna , A. Tenerani , F. Pucci

Spacecraft data reveals a nonuniform ambipolar electric field transverse to the magnetic field in a thin magnetotail current sheet that leads to intense ExB velocity shear and non-gyrotropic particle distributions. The ExB drift far exceeds…

An overview of some recent progress on magnetohydrodynamic stability and current sheet formation in a line-tied system is given. Key results on the linear stability of the ideal internal kink mode and resistive tearing mode are summarized.…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2011-04-07 Yi-Min Huang , A. Bhattacharjee , Ellen G. Zweibel

We investigate the stability and nonlinear evolution of localized electron-scale current sheets using fully kinetic, electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations in two and three dimensions. By varying the current-sheet thickness, we…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2026-03-31 Sushmita A. Mishra , Gurudatt Gaur

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…

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process in various astrophysical, space, and laboratory environments. Many pieces of evidence for magnetic reconnection have been uncovered. However, its specific processes that could be…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-10-24 X. Cheng , Y. Li , L. F. Wan , M. D. Ding , P. F. Chen , J. Zhang , J. J. Liu

We propose a new mechanism to explain the radio Arc and threads in the Galactic Center by current sheets produced by local magnetic shears due to interaction of a moving cloud and the vertical field based on three-dimensional…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Yoshiaki Sofue , Hiromitsu Kigure , Kazunari Shibata

We study the linear and nonlinear evolution of the tearing instability on thin current sheets by means of two-dimensional numerical simulations, within the framework of compressible, resistive magnetohydrodynamics. In particular we analyze…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-04-28 Simone Landi , Luca Del Zanna , Emanuele Papini , Fulvia Pucci , Marco Velli

Magnetic reconnection is thought to be the dynamical mechanism underlying many explosive phenomena observed both in space and in the laboratory, though the question of how fast magnetic reconnection is triggered in such high Lundquist ($S$)…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2017-01-04 Anna Tenerani , Marco Velli , Fulvia Pucci , Simone Landi , Antonio Franco Rappazzo

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-19 Chen Shi , Marco Velli , Nikos Sioulas , Zijin Zhang

The dynamics in the magnetosphere current sheet was simulated following transformations to the rectangular NxM array of cells (cellular automaton) originally proposed by Koselov and Koselova (2002). The magnetosphere part of the modeling…

Space Physics · Physics 2013-08-05 Arian Ojeda , Bienvenido Lazo , Alexander Calzadilla , Siomel Savio , Katy Alazo

Combined tearing-thermal evolution plays an important role in the disruption of current sheets, and formation of cool condensations within the solar atmosphere. However, this has received limited attention to date. We numerically explore a…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-10-18 Samrat Sen , Jack Jenkins , Rony Keppens

Fast $\gamma$-ray variability in blazars remains a central puzzle in high-energy astrophysics, challenging standard shock acceleration models. Blazars, a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with jets pointed close to our line of sight,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-26 Chandan Kumar Das , Bhargav Vaidya , Amit Shukla , Giancarlo Mattia , Karl Mannheim

The tearing mode instability is a key process for magnetic energy conversion in magnetohydrodynamics, once anti-parallel components are allowed to reconnect, leading to the formation of magnetic islands. It has been employed to explain…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-07-16 Grzegorz Kowal , Diego A. Falceta-Gonçalves

In this work, the development of two-dimensional current sheets with respect to tearing-modes, in collisionless plasmas with a strong guide field, is analysed. During their non-linear evolution, these thin current sheets can become unstable…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-03-04 C. Granier , R. Numata , D. Borgogno , E. Tassi , D. Grasso

The stability of electron current sheets embedded within the reconnection exhaust is studied with a 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulation. The electron current layers studied here form self-consistently in a reconnection regime with…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2020-01-08 Ari Le , Adam Stanier , Bill Daughton , Jonathan Ng , Jan Egedal , W. Dave Nystrom , Bob Bird

Astrophysical current layers, e.g., in pulsar winds, can be electrically charged, while the plasma is charge-symmetric, $e^\pm$. Using PIC simulations, we investigate dynamics and plasmoid formation (tearing instability) in charged…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-08 Maxim Lyutikov