Flux Rope Formation and Self-Generated Turbulent Reconnection Driven by the Plasmoid Instability in the Heliosphere

Abstract:

It has been established that the Sweet-Parker current layer in high Lundquist number reconnection is unstable to the super-Alfvénic plasmoid instability. Past two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations have demonstrated that the plasmoid instability leads to a new regime where the Sweet-Parker current layer changes into a chain of plasmoids connected by secondary current sheets, and the averaged reconnection rate becomes nearly independent of the Lundquist number. In this work, three-dimensional simulations with a guide field shows that the additional degree of freedom allows plasmoid instabilities to grow at oblique angles. We present a scenario in which large-scale oblique tearing modes overlap with each other, break flux surfaces, and stir up a spectrum of smaller-scale tearing modes, leading eventually to self-generated turbulent reconnection. The averaged reconnection rate in the self-generated turbulent state is of the order of a hundredth of the characteristic Alfvén speed, which is similar to the two-dimensional result but is an order of magnitude lower than the fastest reconnection rate reported in recent studies of externally driven three-dimensional turbulent reconnection. Kinematic and magnetic energy fluctuations both form elongated eddies along the direction of local magnetic field, which is a signature of anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Both energy fluctuations satisfy power-law spectra in the inertial range. The anisotropy of turbulence eddies is found to be nearly scale-independent, in contrast with the prediction of the Goldreich-Sridhar (GS) theory for anisotropic turbulence in a homogeneous plasma permeated by a uniform magnetic field. The effect of varying the magnitude of the toroidal field on the critical balance condition underlying the GS theory is discussed.