Issue |
A&A
Volume 433, Number 3, April III 2005
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 1139 - 1143 | |
Section | The Sun | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20041933 | |
Published online | 29 March 2005 |
Viscous effects in planar magnetic X-point reconnection
1
Department of Mathematics, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: sts1@math.waikato.ac.nz
2
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA
Received:
1
September
2004
Accepted:
15
December
2004
The impact of viscous dissipation is considered on magnetic reconnection in closed line-tied magnetic X-points. It is shown that viscous effects can provide fast energy dissipation for disturbances which do not alter the initial X-point topology. If the X-point topology is altered, then the rate of viscous dissipation depends on both the perturbed topology and the relative magnitudes of viscosity and electric resistivity. New solutions are demonstrated, which derive from the combination of resistive and viscous effects. The solutions are characterized by monotonically decaying modes which are qualitatively different from the previously known oscillatory modes in nonviscous resistive X-point reconnection. These results suggest that viscous heating in magnetic X-points may be an important effect in solar flares.
Key words: magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) / Sun: flares
© ESO, 2005
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.