Regulation of the normalized rate of driven magnetic reconnection through shocked flux pileup
| Autor: | Samuel Greess, John C. Wallace, Rachel Myers, M. Clark, Ethan Peterson, Alexander Millet-Ayala, Douglass Endrizzi, Jan Egedal, Cary Forest, Joseph Olson |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Shock (fluid dynamics) Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena FOS: Physical sciences Flux Magnetic reconnection Inflow Plasma Mechanics Condensed Matter Physics 01 natural sciences Physics - Plasma Physics Magnetic flux Magnetic field Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) Physics::Plasma Physics Physics::Space Physics 0103 physical sciences Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Supersonic speed 010306 general physics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Plasma Physics. 87 |
| ISSN: | 1469-7807 0022-3778 |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s0022377821000659 |
| Popis: | Magnetic reconnection is explored on the Terrestrial Reconnection Experiment (TREX) for asymmetric inflow conditions and in a configuration where the absolute rate of reconnection is set by an external drive. Magnetic pileup enhances the upstream magnetic field of the high density inflow, leading to an increased upstream Alfven speed and helping to lower the normalized reconnection rate to values expected from theoretical consideration. In addition, a shock interface between the far upstream supersonic plasma inflow and the region of magnetic flux pileup is observed, important to the overall force balance of the system, hereby demonstrating the role of shock formation for configurations including a supersonically driven inflow. Despite the specialised geometry where a strong reconnection drive is applied from only one side of the reconnection layer, previous numerical and theoretical results remain robust and are shown to accurately predict the normalized rate of reconnection for the range of system sizes considered. This experimental rate of reconnection is dependent on system size, reaching values as high as 0.8 at the smallest normalized system size applied. Comment: under consideration for review with the Journal of Plasma Physics on 04/23/2021 (initially submitted 11/06/2020) |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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