Fast reconnection in high-Lundquist-number plasmas due to the plasmoid Instability

By A. Bhattacharjee, Yi-Min Huang, H. Yang, B. Rogers. 2009

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Thin current sheets in systems of large size that exceed a critical value of the Lundquist number are unstable to a super-Alfvenic tearing instability, referred to hereafter as the plasmoid instability. The scaling of the growth rate of the most rapidly growing plasmoid instability with respect to the Lundquist number is shown to follow from the classical dispersion relation for tearing modes. As a result of this instability, the system realizes a nonlinear reconnection rate that appears to be weakly dependent on the Lundquist number, and larger than the Sweet–Parker rate by nearly an order of magnitude (for the range of Lundquist numbers considered). This regime of fast reconnection is realizable in a dynamic and highly unstable thin current sheet, without requiring the current sheet to be turbulent.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13d48df2a3d3021bf4eb04599b1ab3bbbbcf6e57

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Citations in the corpus

Magnetic Reconnection and Hot Spot Formation in Black Hole Accretion Disks (2020, background): “…5×10−4, 10−3, 5× 10−3], chosen such that the corresponding Lundquist numbers S = Lc/η ∈ [∞, 105, 4 × 104, 2 × 104, 104, 2 × 103, 103, 2× 102] range from infinity (ideal GRMHD) to well above and below the threshold for plasmoid forma- tion Sth ≈ 104 (Bhattacharjee et al. 2009; Uzdensky et al. 2010).”
Black Hole Flares: Ejection of Accreted Magnetic Flux through 3D Plasmoid-mediated Reconnection (2021, background): “Reconnecting current sheets are plasmoid-unstable for Lundquist numbers (Bhattacharjee et al. 2009; Uzdensky et al. 2010) h= = ( )S v w S 10 , 1A num crit 4 assuming the Alfvén speed vA∼ c, and the length of a current sheet w∼ rg.”
Modelling Quasi-Periodic Pulsations in Solar and Stellar Flares (2018, background): “This instability is called the plasmoid instability and leads to the formation of plasmoids in a current sheet (Tanuma et al. 2001; Loureiro et al. 2007; Bhattacharjee et al. 2009), where plasmoids are magnetically-confined plasma.”
PARTICLE ACCELERATION AND PLASMA DYNAMICS DURING MAGNETIC RECONNECTION IN THE MAGNETICALLY DOMINATED REGIME (2015, background): “This process may also be important when a hierarchy of collisional plasmoids (Loureiro et al. 2007; Bhattacharjee et al. 2009; Uzdensky et al. 2010) develops kinetic scale current layers that may trigger collisionless reconnection (Daughton et al. 2009; Ji & Daughton 2011).”
Slow Solar Wind: Observations and Modeling (2016, unknown): “The transition between the SP and the plasmoid regime has been predicted (Loureiro et al. 2007) and shown in practice (Skender and Lapenta 2010; Bhattacharjee et al. 2009; Uzdensky et al. 2010) to happen at a critical value of the Lundquist number SC = 104.”
The Interplay of Magnetically Dominated Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Producing Nonthermal Particles (2019, background): “…in our simulations) can break the reconnection layer into shorter elements, consequently leading to a regime of fast nonlinear reconnection (Daughton et al. 2006; Daughton & Karimabadi 2007; Daughton et al. 2009; Bhattacharjee et al. 2009; Huang & Bhattacharjee 2010; Uzdensky et al. 2010).”