Magnetic reconnection induced by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Magnetic reconnection induced by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability
zbMATH Open document ID: 0901.76097
DOI: 10.1007/BF00645144
author: Bernhard Rupp
published in: Astrophysics and Space Science
publication date: 1998-11-29T00:00:00Z
review text: The magnetohydrodynamic reconnection induced by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is studied by using two-dimensional MHD equations for compressible plasma with finite resistivity. Two cases for the initial magnetic field are considered: the uniform field and the sheared field. The investigations are restricted by assumption of two-dimensional disturbances and the constant resistivity. For the Cartesian frame of reference, the simulation box composed of \(104\times 104\) grid points is used, and boundary conditions are imposed on the outer \(100\times 100\) grid points. The long time evolutions are different in the two cases: namely, the electromagnetic stress is dominant in the uniform field case, and the hydrodynamic stress is dominant in the sheared flow case. The simulations show that slow rarefaction structures which can be seen in the uniform field case, are not observed in the sheared field case. In the uniform field geometry, the magnetic field lines are twisting and reconnecting due to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. The magnetic reconnection reorganizes magnetic field lines so that the final configuration consists of straight field lines and is similar to the initial one, but the magnetic field strength is not uniform and the velocity shear scale length is much larger than in the initial field. In the sheared field case, no drastic changes are observed, and sheared magnetic field reconnection operates until the end of the simulation, together with the conversion of the flow energy into the thermal one. The authors show that the growth rate monotonically increases as the Alfvén Mach number \((\text{M}_{\text{A}})\) increases, and monotonically decreases as the sonic Mach number increases (if the sonic Mach number is larger than \(0.2\)). The growth rate becomes saturated when \(\text{M}_{\text{A}}>5\).
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 76W05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 76E25
zbMATH DE Number: 1071625
zbMATH Keywords: two-dimensional MHD equations
zbMATH Keywords: compressible plasma
zbMATH Keywords: finite resistivity
zbMATH Keywords: uniform field
zbMATH Keywords: sheared field
zbMATH Keywords: electromagnetic stress
zbMATH Keywords: hydrodynamic stress
zbMATH Keywords: Alfvén Mach number
zbMATH Keywords: sonic Mach number
reviewed by: Oleg A. Sinkevich
MaRDI profile type: Publication
cites work: Flux-corrected transport. III: Minimal-error FCT algorithms
cites work: Effect of Compressibility on Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in a Plasma
cites work: Fully multidimensional flux-corrected transport algorithms for fluids
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00645144
OpenAlex ID: W2022414149
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1071625