2018/02/21 by Makoto Takamoto · 19 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Current sheet #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Magnetic field #Magnetic reconnection #Magnetohydrodynamics #Mechanics #Physics #Plasma #Plasmoid #Poynting vector #Quantum mechanics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Turbulence #astro-ph.HE #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sty493
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 476(3), 4263-4271 (Oxford University Press) · 9 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2018/02/21 · openalex publication_date 2018/02/22 · openalex created_date 2018/03/06 · arxiv updated 2018/03/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this paper, the temporal evolution of three-dimensional relativistic current sheets in Poynting-dominated plasma is studied for the first time. Over the past few decades, a lot of efforts have been conducted on studying the evolution of current sheets in two-dimensional space, and concluded that sufficiently long current sheets always evolve into the so-called plasmoid chain, which provides a fast reconnection rate independent of its resistivity. However, it is suspected that plasmoid chain can exist only in the case of two-dimensional approximation, and would show transition to turbulence in three-dimensional space. We performed three-dimensional numerical simulation of relativistic current sheet using resistive relativistic magnetohydrodynamic approximation. The results showed that the three-dimensional current sheets evolve not into plasmoid chain but turbulence. The resulting reconnection rate is 0.004, which is much smaller than that of plasmoid chain. The energy conversion from magnetic field to kinetic energy of turbulence is just 0.01 per cent, which is much smaller than typical non-relativistic cases. Using the energy principle, we also showed that the plasmoid is always unstable for a displacement in the opposite direction to its acceleration, probably interchange-type instability, and this always results in seeds of turbulence behind the plasmoids. Finally, the temperature distribution along the sheet is discussed, and it is found that the sheet is less active than plasmoid chain. Our finding can be applied for many high-energy astrophysical phenomena, and can provide a basic model of the general current sheet in Poynting-dominated plasma.