MHD simulations of fast reconnection spontaneously developing in a current sheet

✍ Scribed by M. Ugai

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 817 KB
• Volume: 49
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4655
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4655(88)90225-1

✦ Synopsis

Many of the fundamental problems associated with magnetic reconnection can be studied by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. This paper comprises two parts: Firstly, the algorithms for computer simulations are discussed. Our interest is mainly directed to the high-speed computation by a supercomputer, the design of numerical boundary conditions, and the check of numerical errors. The fast reconnection flow involves strong MHD shocks, which require some artificial (numerical) dissipation to be introduced, so that special care should be given to the effect of the numerical dissipation for such a problem. Secondly, the application of the algorithms to reconnection simulations are illustrated: in particular, results on the propagation of a large scale plasmoid in a very long current sheet are presented.