Fast Magnetic Reconnection Mediated by Plasmoid Instability

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is generally believed to be the underlying mech- anism that powers explosive events in plasmas such as flares and substorms in the solar corona and sawtooth crashes in fusion plasmas. Firstly, this paper provides a fundamental description of the magnetic reconnection process by deriving the Sweet-Parker model. The original time-independent Sweet-Parker model assumes steady-state reconnection and neglects compressbility and plasma beta effects. In this paper, these effects will also be included and discussed using numerically sim- ulated data. Next, this paper discusses the nonlinear regime of plasmoid instability and shows that as a result of this instability, the system can realize a fast nonlinear reconnection rate.