2009/03/03 by R. Samtaney, Ravi Samtaney, N. F. Loureiro +5 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Current sheet #Instability #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Magnetic reconnection #Magnetohydrodynamics #Mechanics #Nonlinear system #Physics #Plasma #Plasmoid #Quantum mechanics #Resistive touchscreen #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.103.105004
submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 2009/03/03 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/04 · arxiv updated 2015/05/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
A detailed numerical study of magnetic reconnection in resistive MHD for very large, previously inaccessible, Lundquist numbers (10(4) <or= S <or= 10(8)) is reported. Large-aspect-ratio Sweet-Parker current sheets are shown to be unstable to super-Alfvénically fast formation of plasmoid (magnetic-island) chains. The plasmoid number scales as S(3/8) and the instability growth rate in the linear stage as S(1/4), in agreement with the theory by Loureiro et al. [Phys. Plasmas 14, 100703 (2007)]. In the nonlinear regime, plasmoids continue to grow faster than they are ejected and completely disrupt the reconnection layer. These results suggest that high-Lundquist-number reconnection is inherently time-dependent and hence call for a substantial revision of the standard Sweet-Parker quasistationary picture for S>10(4).