2008/10/31 by Leonid Malyshkin, Leonid M. Malyshkin · 33 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Compressibility #Condensed matter physics #Dimensionless quantity #Electrical resistivity and conductivity #Electron #Hall effect #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Magnetic field #Magnetic reconnection #Magnetohydrodynamics #Mechanics #Ohm #Ohm's law #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.225001
published in Physical Review Letters 101(22), 225001 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 1 figure
openalex publication_date 2008/11/24 · arxiv created 2008/12/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The rate of quasistationary, two-dimensional magnetic reconnection is calculated in the framework of incompressible Hall magnetohydrodynamics, which includes the Hall and electron pressure terms in Ohm's law. The Hall-magnetohydrodynamics equations are solved in a local region across the reconnection electron layer, including only the upstream region and the layer center. In the case when the ion inertial length di is larger than the Sweet-Parker reconnection layer thickness, the dimensionless reconnection rate is found to be independent of the electrical resistivity and equal to di/L, where L is the scale length of the external magnetic field in the upstream region outside the electron layer and the ion layer thickness is found to be di.