Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T01:57:11.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The scaling of reconnection rate in the two-fluid model of a collisionless forced magnetic reconnection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2013

M. HOSSEINPOUR
M. HOSSEINPOUR*
Affiliation:
Department of Atomic and Molecular Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran (hosseinpour@tabrizu.ac.ir)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The two-fluid model of collisionless forced magnetic reconnection is considered where breaking the frozen-in flow constraint for magnetic field lines is provided by electron inertia. Following the Taylor problem, a tearing stable slab of plasma with a magnetic field reversal is subjected to a small-amplitude boundary perturbation that drives magnetic reconnection at the neutral surface within the plasma. It has been shown that unlike the resistive regime, where the two-fluid magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) description reduces to the single-fluid MHD regime at sufficiently small values of the ion inertial skin-depth, di ≡ c/ωpi (with ωpi as the ion plasma frequency), there is no room for the single-fluid MHD reconnection in the collisionless case, even at very small values of di. Meanwhile, contradictory to the resistive reconnection, the rate of collisionless Hall reconnection always decreases with time as reconnection proceeds. In particular, in the main stage of Hall reconnection, when transition between two main equilibria states are taking place, it scales as t−1/2.

Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , October 2013 , pp. 519 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Avinash, K., Bulanov, S. V., Esirkepov, T., Kaw, P., Pegoraro, F., Sasorov, P. V., and Sen, A. 1998 Forced magnetic field line reconnection in electron magnetohydrodynamics. Phys. Plasmas 5, 2849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birn, J. and Priest, E. 2007 Reconnection of Magnetic Fields: Magnetohydrodynamic and Collisionless Theory and Observations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birn, J.et al., 2005 Forced magnetic reconnection. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L06105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biskamp, D., Schwarz, E. and Drake, J. F. 1997 Two-fluid theory of collisionless magnetic reconnection. Phys. Plasmas 4, 1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, R. 2004 Scaling of forced magnetic reconnection in the Hall-magnetohydrodynamic Taylor problem. Phys. Plasmas 11, 937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, R. and Porcelli, F. 2004 Collisionless magnetic reconnection with arbitrary guide field. Phys. Plasmas 11, 4713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furth, H. P., Killeen, J. and Rosenbluth, M. N. 1963 Finite-resistivity instabilities of a sheet pinch. Phys. Fluids 6, 459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahm, T. S. and Kulsrud, R. M. 1985 Forced magnetic reconnection. Phys. Fluids 28, 2412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosseinpour, M., Bian, N. and Vekstein, G. 2009 Two-fluid regimes of the resistive and collisionless tearing instability. Phys. Plasmas 16, 012104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosseinpour, M., Mohammadi, M. A. and Biabani, S. 2013 The scaling of collisionless magnetic reconnection in an electron-positron plasma with non-scalar pressure. J. Plasma Phys. doi:10.1017/S0022377812001146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosseinpour, M. and Vekstein, G. 2008 Collisionless forced magnetic reconnection in an electron-positron plasma. Phys. Plasmas 15, 022904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malyshkin, M. L. 2009 Model of two-fluid reconnection. Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 235004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mirnov, V. V., Hegna, C. C. and Prager, S. 2004 Two-fluid tearing instability in force-free magnetic configuration. Phys. Plasmas 11, 4468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, E. and Forbes, T. 2000 Magnetic Reconnection: MHD Theory and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shukla, P. K. 1999 A unified description of tearing modes in plasmas. Phys. Lett. A 263, 382–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shukla, P. K., Jammalamadaka, S. and Stenflo, L. 1996 Inertia-driven tearing modes in electron-positron plasmas. Astrophys. Space Science 240, 153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, P. B. and Rogers, N. B. 2008 The scaling of forced collisionless reconnection. Phys. Plasmas 15, 102106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, P. B., Rogers, N. B. and Shay, M. A. 2005 The scaling of forced collisionless reconnection. Phys. Plasmas 12, 122312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terasawa, T. 1983 Hall current effect on tearing mode instability. Geophys. Res. Lett. 10, 475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vekstein, G. 2000 On the correspondence between forced magnetic reconnection and Alfven resonances. Phys. Plasmas 7, 3808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vekstein, G. and Bian, N. H. 2006 Hall assisted forced magnetic reconnection. Phys. Plasmas 13, 122105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, X. and Bhattacharjee, A. 1992 Forced reconnection and current sheet formation in Taylors model. Phys. Fluids B 4, 1795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamada, M., Kulsrud, R. and Ji, H. 2010 Magnetic reconnection. Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweibel, E. G. and Yamada, M. 2009 Magnetic reconnection in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas. Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 47, 291–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar