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A current filamentation mechanism for breaking magnetic field lines during reconnection

Nature volume 474, pages 184–187 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

During magnetic reconnection, the field lines must break and reconnect to release the energy that drives solar and stellar flares1,2 and other explosive events in space3 and in the laboratory4. Exactly how this happens has been unclear, because dissipation is needed to break magnetic field lines and classical collisions are typically weak. Ion–electron drag arising from turbulence5, dubbed ‘anomalous resistivity’, and thermal momentum transport6 are two mechanisms that have been widely invoked. Measurements of enhanced turbulence near reconnection sites in space7,8 and in the laboratory9,10 support the anomalous resistivity idea but there has been no demonstration from measurements that this turbulence produces the necessary enhanced drag11. Here we report computer simulations that show that neither of the two previously favoured mechanisms controls how magnetic field lines reconnect in the plasmas of greatest interest, those in which the magnetic field dominates the energy budget. Rather, we find that when the current layers that form during magnetic reconnection become too intense, they disintegrate and spread into a complex web of filaments that causes the rate of reconnection to increase abruptly. This filamentary web can be explored in the laboratory or in space with satellites that can measure the resulting electromagnetic turbulence.

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Figure 1: The time evolution of reconnection and the development of turbulence.
Figure 2: The geometry of magnetic reconnection at late time.
Figure 3: The filamentary structure of the electron current layer.
Figure 4: Breaking magnetic field lines: the dominant components of Ohm’s law.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the NSF/DOE programme in plasma science and by NASA through the Supporting Research and Technology Program and the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission Science Team. Computations were carried out in part at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Center For Integrated Plasma Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA,

    H. Che

  2. Department of Physics and Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA

    J. F. Drake

  3. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA

    M. Swisdak

Authors
  1. H. Che
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  3. M. Swisdak
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Contributions

All of the authors made significant contributions to this work. H.C. carried out the particle simulations of reconnection. M.S. carried out simulations of isolated electron current layers. H.C., J.F.D. and M.S. analysed the data from the simulations. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to H. Che.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Text and Supplementary Figure 1. (PDF 2054 kb)

Supplementary Movie 1

The movie shows the time evolution of the electron current from a 3-D simulation of magnetic reconnection. The simulation has ambient out-of-plane magnetic field that is 2.5 times that of the reversed magnetic field. (MOV 15392 kb)

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Che, H., Drake, J. & Swisdak, M. A current filamentation mechanism for breaking magnetic field lines during reconnection. Nature 474, 184–187 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10091

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