Detailed Analysis of Fan-Shaped jets in Three Dimensional Numerical Simulation

TL;DR

This study uses 3D resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations to analyze fan-shaped and ordinary reconnection jets, revealing their formation mechanisms and dependencies on magnetic parameters, advancing understanding of dynamic MHD jets.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation-based analysis of fan-shaped jets in magnetic reconnection, highlighting their formation mechanisms and the forces involved, which was not previously well understood.

Findings

Fan-shaped jets are formed along the guide magnetic field.

Lorentz force initially drives the jets, followed by pressure gradient acceleration.

Jet formation depends on magnetic reconnection angle and resistivity.

Abstract

We performed three dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations to study the magnetic reconnection using an initially shearing magnetic field configuration (force free field with a current sheet in the middle of the computational box). It is shown that there are two types of reconnection jets: the ordinary reconnection jets and fan-shaped jets, which are formed along the guide magnetic field. The fan-shaped jets are much different from the ordinary reconnection jets which are ejected by magnetic tension force. There are two driving forces for accelerating the fan-shaped jets. The one is the Lorentz force which dominates the motion of fluid elements at first and then the gas pressure gradient force accelerates the fluid elements in the later stage. The dependence on magnetic reconnection angle and resistivity value has also been studied. The formation and evolution of these jets provide a new understanding of dynamic magnetohydrodynamic jets.