2007•Physics of PlasmasOpen access

Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains

Nuno Loureiro, A. A. Schekochihin, S. C. Cowley

Abstract

Current sheets formed in magnetic reconnection events are found to be unstable to high-wavenumber perturbations. The instability is very fast: its maximum growth rate scales as S1∕4vA∕LCS, where LCS is the length of the sheet, vA the Alfvén speed, and S the Lundquist number. As a result, a chain of plasmoids (secondary islands) is formed, whose number scales as S3∕8.

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Key concepts: Plasmoid, Physics, Current sheet, Instability, Magnetic reconnection, Wavenumber, Current (fluid), Plasma