Thursday, April 25, 2013

1304.6273 (R. L. Dewar et al.)

Plasmoid solutions of the Hahm--Kulsrud--Taylor equilibrium model    [PDF]

R. L. Dewar, A. Bhattacharjee, R. M. Kulsrud, A. M. Wright
The Hahm--Kulsrud (HK) [T. S. Hahm and R. M. Kulsrud, Phys. Fluids {\bf 28}, 2412 (1985)] solutions for a magnetically sheared plasma slab driven by a resonant periodic boundary perturbation illustrate fully shielded (current sheet) and fully reconnected (magnetic island) responses. On the global scale, reconnection involves solving a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium problem. In systems with a continuous symmetry such MHD equilibria are typically found by solving the Grad--Shafranov equation, and in slab geometry the elliptic operator in this equation is the 2-D Laplacian. Thus, assuming appropriate pressure and poloidal current profiles, a conformal mapping method can be used to transform one solution into another with different boundary conditions, giving a continuous sequence of solutions in the form of partially reconnected magnetic islands (plasmoids) separated by Syrovatsky current sheets. The two HK solutions appear as special cases.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.6273

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