Mechanisms of Spontaneous Reconnection: From Magnetospheric to Fusion Plasma

Abstract

Very often space plasma is treated as collisionless. We check the validity of this paradigm considering various regimes of tearing mode (spontaneous reconnection) including effects of particle collisions and shear of magnetic field. We briefly describe Pitaevskii's effect of effective modification of collision frequency due to the finite particle Larmor radius in the presence of magnetic field. This effect results in a significant increase of the role of collisionality, especially in a weakly magnetized systems. Another popular paradigm is related with application of MHD description to collisionless or weakly collisional systems. We show, that for current sheets observed in the Earth magnetotail and magnetopause as well as for current sheets formed in Solar corona and in laboratory devices most appropriate is the kinetic semi-collisional tearing regime. Role of "collisions" could play usual Coulomb pair collisions of electrons and ions (e.g. in Solar corona) or effective collisions (scattering) of electrons with the microturbulence wave modes. Transition to real MHD modes requires either very large collisions frequencies and/or very large amplitudes of the magnetic field shear. The largest domain in the parameter space is occupied by the kinetic regimes of tearing mode growth where dissipation is provided either by Landau damping or by real (or effective) collisions.