Reduced magnetohydrodynamic theory of oblique plasmoid instabilities

TL;DR

This paper develops a reduced magnetohydrodynamic model to analyze oblique plasmoid instabilities in 3D, revealing multiple resonant surfaces, the most unstable oblique modes, and scaling laws for growth rate and plasmoid number.

Contribution

It introduces a 3D reduced MHD framework for oblique plasmoid instabilities, identifying multiple resonant surfaces and deriving new scaling laws for growth rates and plasmoid counts.

Findings

Multiple resonant surfaces exist in 3D with guide fields.

Oblique modes can be more unstable than parallel ones.

Growth rate scales as S_L^{1/4} and plasmoid number as S_L^{3/8}.

Abstract

The three-dimensional nature of plasmoid instabilities is studied using the reduced magnetohydrodynamic equations. For a Harris equilibrium with guide field, represented by $\vc{B}_o = B_{po} \tanh (x/\lambda) \hat{y} + B_{zo} \hat{z}$, a spectrum of modes are unstable at multiple resonant surfaces in the current sheet, rather than just the null surface of the polodial field $B_{yo} (x) = B_{po} \tanh (x/\lambda)$, which is the only resonant surface in 2D or in the absence of a guide field. Here $B_{po}$ is the asymptotic value of the equilibrium poloidal field, $B_{zo}$ is the constant equilibrium guide field, and $\lambda$ is the current sheet width. Plasmoids on each resonant surface have a unique angle of obliquity $\theta \equiv \arctan(k_z/k_y)$. The resonant surface location for angle $\theta$ is $x_s = - \lambda \arctanh (\tan \theta B_{zo}/B_{po})$, and the existence of a resonant surface requires $|\theta| < \arctan (B_{po} / B_{zo})$. The most unstable angle is oblique, i.e. $\theta \neq 0$ and $x_s \neq 0$, in the constant-$\psi$ regime, but parallel, i.e. $\theta = 0$ and $x_s = 0$, in the nonconstant-$\psi$ regime. For a fixed angle of obliquity, the most unstable wavenumber lies at the intersection of the constant-$\psi$ and nonconstant-$\psi$ regimes. The growth rate of this mode is $\gamma_{\textrm{max}}/\Gamma_o \simeq S_L^{1/4} (1-\mu^4)^{1/2}$, in which $\Gamma_o = V_A/L$, $V_A$ is the Alfv\'{e}n speed, $L$ is the current sheet length, and $S_L$ is the Lundquist number. The number of plasmoids scales as $N \sim S_L^{3/8} (1-\mu^2)^{-1/4} (1 + \mu^2)^{3/4}$.