Marina Skender

On the instability of a quasiequilibrium current sheet and the onset of impulsive bursty reconnection

A two-dimensional reconnecting current sheet is studied numerically in the magnetohydrodynamic approach. Different simulation setups are employed in order to follow the evolution of the formed current sheet in diverse configurations: two types of initial equilibria, Harris and force-free, two types of boundary conditions, periodic and open, with uniform and nonuniform grid set, respectively. All the simulated cases are found to exhibit qualitatively the same behavior in which a current sheet evolves slowly through a series of quasiequilibria; eventually it fragments and enters a phase of fast impulsive bursty reconnection. In order to gain more insight on the nature and characteristics of the instability taking place, physical characteristics of the simulated current sheet are related to its geometrical properties. At the adopted Lundquist number of S=10(4) and Reynolds number R=10(4), the ratio of the length to width (aspect ratio) of the formed current sheet is observed to increase slowly in time up to a maximum value at which it fragments. Moreover, additional turbulence applied to the system is shown to exhibit the same qualitative steps, but with the sooner onset of the fragmentation and at smaller aspect ratio.

Whistler wave generation by non-gyrotropic, relativistic, electron beams

Particle-in-cell code, EPOCH, is used for studying features of the wave component evident to propagate backwards from the front of the non-gyrotropic, relativistic beam of electrons injected in the Maxwellian, magnetised background plasma with decreasing density profile. According to recent findings presented in Tsiklauri (2011), Schmitz & Tsiklauri (2013) and Pechhacker & Tsiklauri (2012), in a 1.5-dimensional magnetised plasma system, the non-gyrotropic beam generates freely escaping electromagnetic radiation with properties similar to the Type-III solar radio bursts. In this study the backwards propagating wave component evident in the perpendicular components of the elecromagnetic field in such a system is presented for the first time. Background magnetic field strength in the system is varied in order to prove that the backwards propagating waves frequency, prescribed by the whistler wave dispersion relation, is proportional to the specified magnetic field. Moreover, the identified whistlers are shown to be generated by the normal Doppler-shifted relativistic resonance. Large fraction of the energy of the perpendicular electromagnetic field components is found to be carried away by the whistler waves, while a small but sufficient fraction is going into L- and R- electromagnetic modes.Super-thermal electron beams travelling away from the Sun on the open magnetic field lines are widely accepted to be the source of the Type–III bursts. The earliest idea of the generation of the Type–III bursts was based on the plasma emission mechanism. A fast moving electron beam excites Langmuir waves at the local plasma frequency, ωp. The Langmuir waves are partially transformed via scattering at ωp and 2ωp, with ion sound and oppositely propagating Langmuir waves, respectively, into electromagnetic waves. As the electron beam propagates away from the Sun, through less dense coronal and interplanetary environment, the frequency of the emitted electromagnetic radiation decreases, because plasma frequency is a function of the square root of the plasma density. Type-III bursts have been subject of theoretical, observational and numerical studies. The first detailed theory of the Type-III emission invoked coherent plasma waves, generated by a stream of fast particles, which are due to Rayleigh and combination scattering at ωp and 2ωp subsequently transformed into radio waves. Stochastic growth of the density irregularities was invoked in order to produce stochastically generated clumpy Langmuir waves, where the ambient density perturbations cause the beam to fluctuate around marginal stability. Other theories on the mechanism which generates the Type-III emission include: linear mode conversion of Langmuir waves, Langmuir waves producing electromagnetic radiation as antennas and non-gyroptropic electron beam emission [1] of commensurable properties to the Type-III bursts.