Reconnection in a Weakly Stochastic Magnetic Field

Details Reconnection in a Weakly Stochastic Magnetic Field Reconnection in a Weakly Stochastic Magnetic Field

Dec 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998aas...193.8303v&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 193rd AAS Meeting, #83.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1377

Physics

Scientific paper

We examine the effect of weak, small scale magnetic field structure on the rate of reconnection in a strongly magnetized plasma. We recover lower and upper limits on the reconnection rate, depending on the reaction of the magnetic field to stresses exerted from within the reconnection layer. Using Goldreich and Sridhar's model of strong turbulence in a magnetized plasma with negligible intermittency, we find that the lower limit for the reconnection speed is ~ V_A {cal R}_B(-3/16) {cal M}(3/4) , where V_A is the Alfven speed, {cal R}_B is the magnetic Reynolds number, and {cal M} is the large scale Mach number of the turbulence. The upper limit on the reconnection speed is typically a large fraction of V_A{cal M}(2) . We argue that generic reconnection in turbulent plasmas will normally occur at close to this upper limit The fraction of magnetic energy that goes directly into electron heating scales as {cal R}_B(-7/16) {cal M}(-1/4) , and the thickness of the current sheet scales as {cal R}_B(-9/16) {cal M}(-7/4) . A large fraction of the magnetic energy goes into high frequency Alfven waves. The angle between adjacent field lines on the same side of the reconnection layer is ~ {cal R}_B(-3/16) {cal M}(3/4) on the scale of the current sheet thickness. We claim that the qualitative sense of these conclusions, that reconnection is fast even though current sheets are narrow, is almost independent of the local physics of reconnection and the nature of the turbulent cascade.

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