Search

Large amplitude, turbulent Alfvénic fluctuations have been commonly observed in the solar wind since the first in situ measurements. An important but still unexplained property of such nonlinear fluctuations seen typically in the fastest streams is that, despite the large excursion of the magnetic field fluctuations, the magnitude of the total magnetic field remains nearly constant, a condition that corresponds to spherical polarization. How is this Alfvénic turbulent state achieved in the solar wind remains a fundamental open question in space physics. Although nonlinear Alfvénic fluctuations have been studied for several decades, most of previous work has considered a plasma in thermodynamic equilibrium. The solar wind however displays many non-thermal features and here we discuss how non-thermal effects, in particular pressure anisotropy, and nonlinearities affect the stability and nonlinear evolution of Alfvénic fluctuations with constant total magnetic field magnitude in different plasma-β regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory and simulations have shown that reconnection is triggered via a fast "ideal" tearing instability in current sheets whose inverse aspect ratio decreases to , with S as the Lundquist number defined by the half-length L of the current sheet (of a thickness of 2a). Ideal tearing, in 2D sheets, triggers a hierarchical collapse via stretching of X-points and recursive instability. At each step, the local Lundquist number decreases, until the subsequent sheet thickness either approaches kinetic scales or the Lundquist number becomes sufficiently small. Here we carry out a series of Hall-MHD simulations to show how the Hall effect modifies recursive reconnection once the ion inertial scale is approached. We show that as the ion inertial length becomes of the order of the inner, singular layer thickness at some step of the recursive collapse, reconnection transits from the plasmoid-dominant regime to an intermediate plasmoid+Hall regime and then to the Hall-dominant regime. The structure around the X-point, the reconnection rate, the dissipation property, and the power spectra are also modified significantly by the Hall effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A double adiabatically expanding solar wind would quickly develop large parallel to perpendicular temperature anisotropies in electrons and ions that are not observed. One reason is that firehose instabilities would be triggered, leading to an ongoing driving/saturation evolution mechanism. We verify this assumption here for the first time for the electron distribution function and the electron firehose instability (EFI), using fully kinetic simulations with the Expanding Box Model. This allows the self-consistent study of onset and evolution of the oblique, resonant EFI in an expanding solar wind. We characterize how the competition between EFI and adiabatic expansion plays out in high- and low-beta cases, in high- and low-speed solar wind streams. We observe that, even when competing against expansion, the EFI results in perpendicular heating and parallel cooling. These two concurrent processes effectively limit the expansion-induced increase in temperature anisotropy and parallel electron beta. We show that the EFI goes through cycles of stabilization and destabilization: when higher wave number EFI modes saturate, lower wave number modes are destabilized by the effects of the expansion. We show how resonant wave/ particle interaction modifies the electron velocity distribution function after the onset of the EFI. The simulations are performed with the fully kinetic, semi-implicit expanding box code EB-iPic3D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address the challenges that come with fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of the expanding solar wind by introducing a semi-implicit, Expanding Box Model (EBM) approach to the study of solar wind kinetic physics. Plasma propagation and expansion are dealt with via the variable change of the EBM. In this way the large separation between scales of interest and domain size is addressed by including solar wind propagation and expansion as time-dependent coupling terms and coordinate stretching. The semi-implicit discretization, in the widely used Implicit Moment Method (IMM) flavor, promises to increase the simulated domain size and duration with respect to explicit discretization. The EBM IMM equations are derived and tested against expected behavior of expanding plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast solar wind shows a wide spectrum of transverse magnetic and velocity field perturbations. These perturbations are strongly correlated in the sense of Alfvén waves propagating mostly outward, from the Sun to the interplanetary medium. They are likely to be fundamental to the acceleration and the heating of the solar wind. However, the precise origin of the broadband spectrum is unknown to date. Typical periods of chromospheric Alfvén waves are limited to a few minutes, and any longer period perturbations should be strongly reflected at the transition region. In this work, we show that minute long Alfvénic fluctuations are unstable to the parametric instability. Parametric instability enables an inverse energy cascade by exciting several-hour-long periods of Alfvénic fluctuations together with strong density fluctuations (typically between 1 and 20 R⊙). These results may improve our understanding of the origin of the solar wind turbulent spectrum and will be tested by the Parker Solar Probe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the stability of large-amplitude, circularly polarized Alfvén waves in an anisotropic plasma described by the double-adiabatic/CGL closure, and in particular the effect of a background thermal pressure anisotropy on the well-known properties of Alfvén wave parametric decay in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Anisotropy allows instability over a much wider range of values of parallel plasma beta (β∥) when ξ = p0⊥/p0∥ > 1. When the pressure anisotropy exceeds a critical value, ξ ≥ ξ* with ξ* ≃ 2.7, there is a new regime in which the parametric instability is no longer quenched at high β∥, and in the limit β∥ ≫ 1, the growth rate becomes independent of β∥. In the opposite case of ξ < ξ*, the instability is strongly suppressed with increasing parallel plasma beta, similarly to the MHD case. We analyze marginal stability conditions for parametric decay in the (ξ, β∥) parameter space and discuss possible implications for Alfvénic turbulence in the solar wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alfvénic fluctuations in the solar wind display many properties reflecting an ongoing nonlinear cascade, e.g., a well-defined spectrum in frequency, together with some characteristics more commonly associated with the linear propagation of waves from the Sun, such as the variation of fluctuation amplitude with distance, dominated by solar wind expansion effects. Therefore, both nonlinearities and expansion must be included simultaneously in any successful model of solar wind turbulence evolution. Because of the disparate spatial scales involved, direct numerical simulations of turbulence in the solar wind represent an arduous task, especially if one wants to go beyond the incompressible approximation. Indeed, most simulations neglect solar wind expansion effects entirely. Here we develop a numerical model to simulate turbulent fluctuations from the outer corona to 1 au and beyond, including the sub-Alfvénic corona. The accelerating expanding box (AEB) extends the validity of previous expanding box models by taking into account both the acceleration of the solar wind and the inhomogeneity of background density and magnetic field. Our method incorporates a background accelerating wind within a magnetic field that naturally follows the Parker spiral evolution using a two-scale analysis in which the macroscopic spatial effect coupling fluctuations with background gradients becomes a time-dependent coupling term in a homogeneous box. In this paper we describe the AEB model in detail and discuss its main properties, illustrating its validity by studying Alfvén wave propagation across the Alfvén critical point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the growth rate of reconnection instabilities in thin current sheets in the presence of both resistivity and viscosity. In a previous paper, Pucci & Velli, it was argued that at sufficiently high Lundquist number S it is impossible to form current sheets with aspect ratios that scale as with because the growth rate of the tearing mode would then diverge in the ideal limit . Here we extend their analysis to include the effects of viscosity, always present in numerical simulations along with resistivity, and which may play a role in the solar corona and other astrophysical environments. A finite Prandtl number allows current sheets to reach larger aspect ratios before becoming rapidly unstable in pileup-type regimes. Scalings with Lundquist and Prandtl numbers are discussed, as well as the transition to kinetic reconnection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We carry out two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of an ensemble of Alfvénic fluctuations propagating in a structured, expanding solar wind including the presence of fast and slow solar wind streams. Using an appropriate expanding box model, the simulations incorporate the effects of fast–slow stream shear and compression and rarefaction self-consistently. We investigate the radial and longitudinal evolution of the cross helicity, the total and residual energies and the power spectra of outward and inward Alfvénic fluctuations. The stream interaction is found to strongly affect the radial evolution of Alfvénic turbulence. The total energy in the Alfvén waves is depleted within the velocity shear regions, accompanied by the decrease of the normalized cross helicity. The presence of stream compression facilitates this process. Residual energy fluctuates around zero due to the correlation and de-correlation between the inward/outward waves but no net growth or decrease of the residual energy is observed. The radial power spectra of the inward/outward Alfvén waves show significant longitudinal variations. Kolmogorov-like spectra are developed only inside the fast and slow streams and when both the compression and shear are present. On the other hand, the spectra along the longitudinal direction show clear Kolmogorov-like inertial ranges in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic reconnection may be the fundamental process allowing energy stored in magnetic fields to be released abruptly, with solar flares and coronal mass ejection being archetypal natural plasma examples. Magnetic reconnection is much too slow of a process to be efficient on the large scales, but accelerates once small enough scales are formed in the system. For this reason, the fractal reconnection scenario was introduced to explain explosive events in the solar atmosphere; it was based on the recursive triggering and collapse via tearing instability of a current sheet originally thinned during the rise of a filament in the solar corona. Here we compare the different fractal reconnection scenarios that have been proposed, and derive generalized scaling relations for the recursive triggering of fast, “ideal” —i.e., Lundquist number independent—tearing in collapsing current sheet configurations with arbitrary current profile shapes. An important result is that the Sweet–Parker scaling with Lundquist number, if interpreted as the aspect ratio of the singular layer in an ideally unstable sheet, is universal and does not depend on the details of the current profile in the sheet. Such a scaling, however, must not be interpreted in terms of stationary reconnection, rather it defines a step in the accelerating sequence of events of the ideal tearing mediated fractal cascade. We calculate scalings for the expected number of plasmoids for such generic profiles and realistic Lundquist numbers, showing that in ideal tearing scenarios a smaller number of plasmoids, by orders of magnitude, is generated compared to the original fractal model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetohydrodynamic simulations have shown that a nonunique critical Lundquist number Sc exists, hovering around Sc ∼ 104, above which threshold Sweet–Parker type stationary reconnecting configurations become unstable to a fast tearing mode dominated by plasmoid generation. It is known that the flow along the sheet plays a stabilizing role, though a satisfactory explanation of the nonuniversality and variable critical Lundquist numbers observed is still lacking. Here we discuss this question using 2D linear MHD simulations and linear stability analyses of Sweet–Parker type current sheets in the presence of background stationary inflows and outflows at low Lundquist numbers (S ≤ 104). Simulations show that the inhomogeneous outflow stabilizes the current sheet by stretching the growing magnetic islands and at the same time evacuating the magnetic islands out of the current sheet. This limits the time during which fluctuations that begin at any given wavelength can remain unstable, rendering the instability nonexponential. We find that the linear theory based on the expanding-wavelength assumption works well for S larger than ∼1000. However, we also find that the inflow and location of the initial perturbation also affect the stability threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main questions in magnetic reconnection is the origin of triggering behavior with on/off properties that, once it is activated, accounts for the fast magnetic energy conversion to kinetic and thermal energies at the heart of explosive events in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas. Over the past decade, progress has been made on the initiation of fast reconnection via the plasmoid instability and what has been called “ideal” tearing, which sets in once current sheets thin to a critical inverse aspect ratio . As shown by Pucci & Velli, at , the timescale for the instability to develop becomes of the order of the Alfvén time and independent of the Lundquist number (here defined in terms of current sheet length L). However, given the large values of S in natural plasmas, this transition might occur for thicknesses of the inner resistive singular layer that are comparable to the ion inertial length di. When this occurs, Hall currents produce a three-dimensional quadrupole structure of the magnetic field, and the dispersive waves introduced by the Hall effect accelerate the instability. Here we present a linear study showing how the “ideal” tearing mode critical aspect ratio is modified when Hall effects are taken into account, including more general scaling laws of the growth rates in terms of sheet inverse aspect ratio: the critical inverse aspect ratio is amended to , at which point the instability growth rate becomes Alfvénic and does not depend on either of the (small) parameters . We discuss the implications of this generalized triggering aspect ratio for recently developed phase diagrams of magnetic reconnection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]