Abstract Details
Abstracts
Author: Bamandas Basu
Requested Type: Poster
Submitted: 2024-04-09 20:18:09
Co-authors: R. Spigler, B. Coppi, B. Basu, V. Ricci
Contact Info:
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachuse 02139
United States
Abstract Text:
Magnetic reconnection is usually associated with conversion of magnetic energy into particle acceleration or thermal energy. But a specific reconnection process driven by plasma pressure gradients had been identified already in Ref. [1] with a consistent theory of (non-ideal) MHD m0=1 modes in well confined plasmas. This process, based on an Ohm's law contribution to the electron momentum balance equation, remains also the basis for the explanation of the observed sawtooth oscillations of the central plasma pressure and for the inferred magnetic field structures due to fishbone oscillations [2] in the presence of injected high energy particle populations. A novel process [3], expected to have applications, consists of an “alternator” involving magnetic reconnection associated with a significant gradient of the longitudinal electron pressure and based on the electron thermal energy balance equation rather than on an Ohm's law. A comparison is made of the “alternator” with the Biermann Battery concept, involving magnetic fields growing out of misaligned electron temperature and density gradients, considering that, instead, the growth of reconnection [3] depends on the particle density gradient in addition to one (aligned with it) of the electron temperatures.
*Sponsored in part by the Kavli Foundation (MIT) and by CNR of Italy.
[1] B. Coppi et al. Fizika Plasmi 6, 961 (1976).
[2] B. Coppi and F. Porcelli, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 2272 (1986).
[3] B. Coppi and B. Basu, Phys. Lett. A, 397, 127265 (2021).
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