Sweet-Parker reconnection with anomalous resistivity
Xuening Bai, Princeton University
Advisor: Patrick Diamond, UCSD
Abstract: We describe the basic idea of anomalous resistivity in non-relativistic collisionless ion-electron plasma using a one-dimensional model of Sweet-Parker reconnection. The model is based on ion-accoustic instability which is triggered when ion temperature is small and electron drift speed exceeds a few times the sound speed. The instability generates ion-accoustic waves, which are damped by non-linear wave-particle interaction. Anomalous resistivity arises due to the momentum exchange between waves and particles. The calculated anomalous resistivity strongly depends on the current density, and is typically much larger than the microscopic resistivity. However, matching the anomalous resistivity to the Sweet-Parker model, the resulting reconnection rate still falls off the observed rate by a large factor.
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