Statistical Analysis of Current Sheets in Three-Dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework for analyzing the statistical properties of current sheets in 3D MHD turbulence simulations, focusing on their geometrical features, intensities, and reconnection roles.

Contribution

It presents an algorithm for identifying and characterizing current sheets in 3D MHD turbulence simulations, and compares their properties with theoretical models.

Findings

Different statistical properties for current sheets with and without X-points.

Scaling behaviors align with phenomenological predictions for MHD turbulence.

Reconnecting current sheets show consistency with the Sweet-Parker reconnection model.

Abstract

We develop a framework for studying the statistical properties of current sheets in numerical simulations of 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We describe an algorithm that identifies current sheets in a simulation snapshot and then determines their geometrical properties (including length, width, and thickness) and intensities (peak current density and total energy dissipation rate). We then apply this procedure to simulations of reduced MHD turbulence and perform a statistical analysis on the obtained population of current sheets. We evaluate the role of reconnection by separately studying the populations of current sheets which contain magnetic X-points and those which do not. We find that the statistical properties of the two populations are different in general. We compare the scaling of these properties to phenomenological predictions obtained for the inertial range of MHD turbulence. Finally, we test whether the reconnecting current sheets are consistent with the Sweet-Parker model.