A two-fluid study of oblique tearing modes in a force-free current sheet

Akçay, Cihan; Daughton, William; Lukin, Vyacheslav S.; Liu, Yi-Hsin

doi:10.1063/1.4940945

Title: A two-fluid study of oblique tearing modes in a force-free current sheet

Journal Article · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4940945· OSTI ID:1240683

Akçay, Cihan ^[1]; Daughton, William ^[1]; Lukin, Vyacheslav S. ^[2]; Liu, Yi-Hsin ^[3]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA (United States)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)

Kinetic simulations have demonstrated that three-dimensional reconnection in collisionless regimes proceeds through the formation and interaction of magnetic flux ropes, which are generated due to the growth of tearing instabilities at multiple resonance surfaces. Because kinetic simulations are intrinsically expensive, it is desirable to explore the feasibility of reduced two-fluid models to capture this complex evolution, particularly, in the strong guide field regime, where two-fluid models are better justified. With this goal in mind, this paper compares the evolution of the collisionless tearing instability in a force-free current sheet with a two-fluid model and fully kinetic simulations. Our results indicate that the most unstable modes are oblique for guide fields larger than the reconnecting field, in agreement with the kinetic results. The standard two-fluid tearing theory is extended to address the tearing instability at oblique angles. As a results this theory yields a flat oblique spectrum and underestimates the growth of oblique modes in a similar manner to kinetic theory relative to kinetic simulations.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396

OSTI ID:: 1240683

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1236411

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-15-28915; PHPAEN

Journal Information:: Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 1; ISSN 1070-664X

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 8 works

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Relativistic Tearing Mode in Pair Plasmas and Application to Magnetic Giant Flares Yang, S. D. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 880, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab29f6	journal	July 2019

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