Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains

By N. Loureiro, A. Schekochihin, S. Cowley. 2007

630 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Current sheets formed in magnetic reconnection events are found to be unstable to high-wavenumber perturbations. The instability is very fast: its maximum growth rate scales as S1∕4vA∕LCS, where LCS is the length of the sheet, vA the Alfven speed, and S the Lundquist number. As a result, a chain of plasmoids (secondary islands) is formed, whose number scales as S3∕8.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/171d31def05c9ae4ed84435a7e12b7a098f2b947

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Citations in the corpus

SIMULTANEOUS OBSERVATION OF RECONNECTION INFLOW AND OUTFLOW ASSOCIATED WITH THE 2010 AUGUST 18 SOLAR FLARE (2011, background): “A current sheet in an antiparallel magnetic field is unstable due to the tearing instability, and can create plasmoids (Furth et al. 1963; Steinolfson & Van Hoven 1983; Loureiro et al. 2007).”
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.”
Magnetic Fields in Galaxies (2010, background): “…sheet formation by ion-neutral drift (Brandenburg & Zweibel 1994), externally driven MHD turbulence in the reconnection layer (Lazarian & Vishniac 1999), and self-disruption of the reconnection layer by the plasmoid instability (Loureiro et al. 2007), possibly accompanied by kinetic effects.”
Reconnection-driven plasmoids in blazars: fast flares on a slow envelope (2012, background): “Instabilities in the current sheet (e.g. secondary tearing instability; Loureiro et al. 2007) result inerratic formation of plasmoids that leave the reconnection region at rel tivistic speed.”
THE INTERNAL-COLLISION-INDUCED MAGNETIC RECONNECTION AND TURBULENCE (ICMART) MODEL OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2010, background): “To compare 13 We note that the study of reconnection is an rapidly evolving field (Drake et al. 2006; Loureiro et al. 2007, 2009; Zenitani et al. 2009, 2010).”
Slow Solar Wind: Observations and Modeling (2016, positive): “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.”
Magnetic Reconnection and Hot Spot Formation in Black Hole Accretion Disks (2020, background): “H E ] 9 M stability, break up, and produce chains of plasmoids (Loureiro et al. 2007) that interact, merge, grow, and are advected with the flow.”
Magnetohydrodynamic Oscillations in the Solar Corona and Earth’s Magnetosphere: Towards Consolidated Understanding (2016, methodology): “For example, Loureiro et al. (2007) have checked the Sweet–Parker solution of magnetic reconnection in a simple current sheet.”
The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “[642,643]) could increase the reconnection rate significantly.”
A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “10 Many effects are neglected, such as secondary instabilities (Dahlburg, Klimchuk & Antiochos 2003, 2005), two-dimensional tearing instability (Loureiro et al. 2007; Jaroschek & Hoshino 2009) (but a temperaturedependent resistivity, non-uniform flow along the layer, and pressure anisotropy can…”