Hall magnetohydrodynamic reconnection in the plasmoid unstable regime

S. D. Baalrud, A. Bhattacharjee, Y.-M. Huang, K. Germaschewski

doi:10.1063/1.3633473

Hall magnetohydrodynamic reconnection in the plasmoid unstable regime

DOI PDF 被引用文献4件

S. D. Baalrud

Center for Integrated Computation and Analysis of Reconnection and Turbulence, University of New Hampshire, Durham , New Hampshire 03824, USA
A. Bhattacharjee

Center for Integrated Computation and Analysis of Reconnection and Turbulence, University of New Hampshire, Durham , New Hampshire 03824, USA
Y.-M. Huang

Center for Integrated Computation and Analysis of Reconnection and Turbulence, University of New Hampshire, Durham , New Hampshire 03824, USA
K. Germaschewski

Center for Integrated Computation and Analysis of Reconnection and Turbulence, University of New Hampshire, Durham , New Hampshire 03824, USA

抄録

<jats:p>A set of reduced Hall magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations are used to evaluate the stability of large aspect ratio current sheets to the formation of plasmoids (secondary islands). Reconnection is driven by resistivity in this analysis, which occurs at the resistive skin depth dη≡SL-1/2LνA/γ, where SL is the Lundquist number, L, the length of the current sheet, νA, the Alfvén speed, and γ, the growth rate. Modifications to a recent resistive MHD analysis [N. F. Loureiro et al., Phys. Plasmas 14, 100703 (2007)] arise when collisions are sufficiently weak that dη is shorter than the ion skin depth di ≡ c/ωpi. Secondary islands grow faster in this Hall MHD regime: the maximum growth rate scales as (di/L)6/13SL7/13νA/L and the number of plasmoids as (di/L)1/13SL11/26, compared to SL1/4νA/L and S3/8, respectively, in resistive MHD.</jats:p>