1,419 research outputs found
Rayleigh-Taylor instability in partially ionized compressible plasmas: one fluid approach
We study the modification of the classical criterion for the linear onset and
growth rate of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) in a partially ionized
(PI) plasma in the one-fluid description, considering a generalized induction
equation. The governing linear equations and appropriate boundary conditions,
including gravitational terms, are derived and applied to the case of the RTI
in a single interface between two partially ionized plasmas. The boundary
conditions lead to an equation for the frequencies in which some of them have
positive complex parts, marking the appearance of the RTI. We study the
ambipolar term alone first, extending the result to the full induction equation
later. We find that the configuration is always unstable because of the
presence of a neutral species. In the classical stability regime the growth
rate is small, since the collisions prevent the neutral fluid to fully develop
the RTI. For parameters in the classical instability regime the growth rate is
lowered, but for the considered theoretical values of the collision frequencies
and diffusion coefficients for solar prominences the differences with the
compressible MHD case are small. We conclude that PI modifies some aspects of
the linear RTI instability, since it takes into account that neutrals do not
feel the stabilizing effect of the magnetic field. For the set of parameters
representative for solar prominences, our model gives the resulting timescale
comparable with observed lifetimes of RTI plumes.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic
Numerical simulations of quiet Sun magnetic fields seeded by Biermann battery
The magnetic fields of the quiet Sun cover at any time more than 90\% of its
surface and their magnetic energy budget is crucial to explain the thermal
structure of the solar atmosphere. One of the possible origins of these fields
is due to the action of local dynamo in the upper convection zone of the Sun.
Existing simulations of the local solar dynamo require an initial seed field,
and sufficiently high spatial resolution, in order to achieve the amplification
of the seed field to the observed values in the quiet Sun. Here we report an
alternative model of seeding based on the action of the Bierman battery effect.
This effect generates a magnetic field due to the local imbalances in electron
pressure in the partially ionized solar plasma. We show that the battery effect
self-consistently creates from zero an initial seed field of a strength of the
order of micro G, and together with dynamo amplification, allows the generation
of quiet Sun magnetic fields of a similar strength to those from solar
observations.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysic
Fast-to-Alfv\'en mode conversion mediated by Hall current. II Application to the solar atmosphere
Coupling between fast magneto-acoustic and Alfv\'en waves can be observe in
fully ionized plasmas mediated by stratification and 3D geometrical effects. In
Paper I, Cally & Khomenko (2015) have shown that in a weakly ionized plasma,
such as the solar photosphere and chromosphere, the Hall current introduces a
new coupling mechanism. The present study extends the results from Paper I to
the case of warm plasma. We report on numerical experiments where mode
transformation is studied using quasi-realistic stratification in thermodynamic
parameters resembling the solar atmosphere. This redresses the limitation of
the cold plasma approximation assumed in Paper I, in particular allowing the
complete process of coupling between fast and slow magneto-acoustic modes and
subsequent coupling of the fast mode to the Alfv\'en mode through the Hall
current. Our results confirm the efficacy of the mechanism proposed in Paper I
for the solar case. We observe that the efficiency of the transformation is a
sensitive function of the angle between the wave propagation direction and the
magnetic field, and of the wave frequency. The efficiency increases when the
field direction and the wave direction are aligned for increasing wave
frequencies. After scaling our results to typical solar values, the maximum
amplitude of the transformed Alfv\'en waves, for a frequency of 1 Hz,
corresponds to an energy flux (measured above the height of peak Hall coupling)
of , based on an amplitude of 500 at
, which is sufficient to play a major role in both quiet and active
region coronal heating
Three-dimensional simulations of solar magneto-convection including effects of partial ionization
Over the last decades, realistic 3D radiative-MHD simulations have become the
dominant theoretical tool for understanding the complex interactions between
the plasma and the magnetic field on the Sun. Most of such simulations are
based on approximations of magnetohydrodynamics, without directly considering
the consequences of the very low degree of ionization of the solar plasma in
the photosphere and bottom chromosphere. The presence of large amount of
neutrals leads to a partial decoupling of the plasma and the magnetic field. As
a consequence of that, a series of non-ideal effects (ambipolar diffusion, Hall
effect and battery effect) arises. The ambipolar effect is the dominant one in
the solar chromosphere. Here we report on the first three-dimensional realistic
simulations of magneto-convection including ambipolar diffusion and battery
effects. The simulations are done using the newly developed Mancha3D code. Our
results reveal that ambipolar diffusion causes measurable effects on the
amplitudes of waves excited by convection in the simulations, on the absorption
of Poynting flux and heating and on the formation of chromospheric structures.
We provide a low limit on the chromospheric temperature increase due to the
ambipolar effect using the simulations with battery-excited dynamo fields.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysic
High frequency waves in the corona due to null points
This work aims to understand the behavior of non-linear waves in the vicinity
of a coronal null point. In previous works we have showed that high frequency
waves are generated in such magnetic configuration. This paper studies those
waves in detail in order to provide a plausible explanation of their
generation. We demonstrate that slow magneto-acoustic shock waves generated in
the chromosphere propagate through the null point and produce a train of
secondary shocks that escape along the field lines. A particular combination of
the shock wave speeds generates waves at a frequency of 80 mHz. We speculate
that this frequency may be sensitive to the atmospheric parameters in the
corona and therefore can be used to probe the structure of this solar layer
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