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http://hdl.handle.net/1903/4139
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| Title: | Catastrophe Model for the Onset of Fast Magnetic Reconnection |
| Authors: | Cassak, Paul Adam |
| Advisors: | Drake, James F |
| Department/Program: | Physics |
| Type: | Dissertation |
| Sponsors: | Digital Repository at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) |
| Keywords: | Physics, Fluid and Plasma (0759)
Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics (0606)
magnetic reconnection; solar flares; collisionless reconnection; Hall reconnection; magnetic reconnection onset; Sweet-Parker reconnection |
| Issue Date: | 24-Nov-2006 |
| Abstract: | Solar flares, magnetic substorms and sawtooth crashes in fusion devices are explosive events in which magnetic reconnection facilitates the rapid release of energy stored in stressed magnetic fields into the surrounding plasma. Much effort has gone into understanding how the energy is released so fast. Collisional (Sweet-Parker) reconnection, based on resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), is a successful physical model but is far too slow to explain observed energy release rates. In collisionless (Hall) reconnection, dispersive waves introduced by the Hall effect lead to energy release rates fast enough to explain observations. However, the steady-state description does not address why reconnection is explosive. We present a fully nonlinear model for the dynamics of magnetic reconnection. Using scaling arguments and resistive Hall-MHD numerical simulations, we show that the Sweet-Parker solution only exists when the current sheet is thick enough, while the Hall solution only exis... |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1903/4139 |
| Appears in Collections: | Physics Theses and Dissertations
UM Theses and Dissertations
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Size | Format | No. of Downloads |
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| umi-umd-3933.pdf | | 1563Kb | Adobe PDF | 114 | View/Open |
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