2000/09/30 by Yu. V. Dumin
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
published as Solar System Research, Vol.32, No.4, 1998, pp.323-325 (Translated from Astronomicheskii Vestnik, Vol.32, No.4, 1998, pp.367-369) · LaTeX2e, 3 pages, 1 eps figure, uses epsfig package. Typesetting options (referring to A4 paper size) corrected
arxiv created 2000/10/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Attention is drawn to a fundamental difference between the physical mechanisms responsible for the magnetic field freezing-in effect in spatially isotropic (collisional) and strongly anisotropic (collisionless) plasmas. (The first case is characteristic of internal regions of the Sun and other stars; the second, for the solar corona, interplanetary and interstellar medium, planetary ionospheres and magnetospheres, cometary tails.) It is shown that particles of a collisionless plasma remain in the same field line during their motion because of the properties of electrodynamic drift which stem from the divergence-free character of the magnetic field and the equipotentiality of the field lines (but not as a result of the appearance of induction currents, compensating variations of the external magnetic flux through a closed contour, as in the case of isotropic conductivity of the plasma).