Formation and Reconnection of Three-dimensional Current Sheets with a Guide Field in the Solar Corona

TL;DR

This study uses 3D MHD simulations to explore how guide fields influence magnetic reconnection in the solar corona, revealing the structure and density fluctuations of current sheets and their observational signatures.

Contribution

It extends previous work by quantifying the density enhancement scales in current sheets across different guide field strengths using advanced autocorrelation and wavelet analyses.

Findings

Density enhancement scales depend on guide field strength.

Distinct spectral slopes characterize different structure formation and energy transfer ranges.

Reconnection-generated structures may be observable in solar wind data.

Abstract

We analyze a series of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection in a model solar corona to study the effect of the guide field component on quasi-steady state interchange reconnection in a pseudostreamer arcade configuration. This work extends the analysis of \citet{Edmondson2010b} by quantifying the mass density enhancement coherency scale in the current sheet associated with magnetic island formation during the nonlinear phase of plasmoid-unstable reconnection. We compare the results of four simulations of a zero, weak, moderate, and a strong guide field, $B_{GF}/B_0 = \lbrace 0.0 , 0.1 , 0.5 , 1.0 \rbrace$, to quantify the plasmoid density enhancement's longitudinal and transverse coherency scales as a function of the guide field strength. We derive these coherency scales from autocorrelation and wavelet analyses, and demonstrate how these scales may be used to interpret the density enhancement fluctuation's Fourier power spectra in terms of a structure formation range, an energy continuation range, and an inertial range---each population with a distinct spectral slope. We discuss the simulation results in the context of solar and heliospheric observations of pseudostreamer solar wind outflow and possible signatures of reconnection-generated structure.