Speaker
Anton Nechaev
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P5.4009.pdf
New class of neutral current sheets with a sheared magnetic field
in collisionless plasma
A. A. Nechaev1 , V. V. Kocharovsky1,2 Vl. V. Kocharovsky1 , V. Yu. Martyanov3
1 Institute of Applied Physics of the RAS, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
2 Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, USA
3 Intel Corp., Chandler, USA
We found a wide class of self-consistent magnetostatic structures with sheared field lines
and arbitrary energy distributions of particles in a collisionless plasma. A member of that class
is a superposition of two neutral current sheets with orthogonal planar magnetic fields and
cylindrically symmetric momentum distribution functions of particles. Each planar current sheet
satisfies the stationary Vlasov–Maxwell equations and may have complicated self-consistent
spatial profiles of the current density and magnetic field [1].
The resultant configurations can have an almost arbitrary profile of the shear angle of mag-
netic field, in particular a non-monotonic one. We develop a regular technique to construct such
structures and provide a number of new examples, including localized, periodic, and force-free
sheared current sheets. We describe limitations on the anisotropy degree of particle distributions
and the magnetic-to-particle energy ratio. Those sheets can be either thick or thin with respect
to the typical particle gyroradius. Most of the previously known current sheet families with the
sheared magnetic field lines, e.g. [2, 3, 4, 5], are included in the suggested class.
We discuss possible applications of our technique for modelling current structures in various
space and astrophysical plasmas, both relativistic and non-relativistic.
References
[1] V. V. Kocharovsky et al., Phys. Uspekhi, 59, 1165 (2016)
[2] W. Alpers, Astrophys. Space Sci., 5, 425 (1969)
[3] Paul J. Channell, Phys. Fluids, 19, 1541 (1976)
[4] F. Wilson, T. Neukirch, Phys. Plasmas, 18, 082108 (2011)
[5] B. Abraham-Shrauner, Phys. Plasmas, 20, 102117 (2013)
