Resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection : resolving long-term, chaotic dynamics

We acknowledge financial support from the EC FP7/2007-2013 Grant Agreement SWIFF (No. 263340) and from project GOA/2009/009 (KU Leuven). This research has been funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office (IAP P7/08 CHARM). Part of the simulations used the infrastructure of the VSC-Flemish Supercomputer Center, funded by the Hercules Foundation and the Flemish Government-Department EWI. Another part of the simulations was done at the former Danish Center for Scientific Computing at Copenhagen University which is now part of DeIC Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation.In this paper, we address the long-term evolution of an idealised double current system entering reconnection regimes where chaotic behavior plays a prominent role. Our aim is to quantify the energetics in high magnetic Reynolds number evolutions, enriched by secondary tearing events, multiple magnetic island coalescence, and compressive versus resistive heating scenarios. Our study will pay particular attention to the required numerical resolutions achievable by modern (grid-adaptive) computations, and comment on the challenge associated with resolving chaotic island formation and interaction. We will use shock-capturing, conservative, grid-adaptive simulations for investigating trends dominated by both physical (resistivity) and numerical (resolution) parameters, and confront them with (visco-)resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations performed with very different, but equally widely used discretization schemes. This will allow us to comment on the obtained evolutions in a manner irrespective of the adopted discretization strategy. Our findings demonstrate that all schemes used (finite volume based shock-capturing, high order finite differences, and particle in cell-like methods) qualitatively agree on the various evolutionary stages, and that resistivity values of order 0.001 already can lead to chaotic island appearance. However, none of the methods exploited demonstrates convergence in the strong sense in these chaotic regimes. At the same time, nonperturbed tests for showing convergence over long time scales in ideal to resistive regimes are provided as well, where all methods are shown to agree. Both the advantages and disadvantages of specific discretizations as applied to this challenging problem are discussed.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Simulating the in situ condensation process of solar prominences

Prominences in the solar corona are a hundredfold cooler and denser than their surroundings, with a total mass of 1013 up to 1015 g. Here, we report on the first comprehensive simulations of three-dimensional, thermally and gravitationally stratified magnetic flux ropes where in situ condensation to a prominence occurs due to radiative losses. After a gradual thermodynamic adjustment, we witness a phase where runaway cooling occurs while counter-streaming shearing flows drain off mass along helical field lines. After this drainage, a prominence-like condensation resides in concave upward field regions, and this prominence retains its overall characteristics for more than two hours. While condensing, the prominence establishes a prominence-corona transition region where magnetic field-aligned thermal conduction is operative during the runaway cooling. The prominence structure represents a force-balanced state in a helical flux rope. The simulated condensation demonstrates a right-bearing barb, as a remnant of the drainage. Synthetic images at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths follow the onset of the condensation, and confirm the appearance of horns and a three-part structure for the stable prominence state, as often seen in erupting prominences. This naturally explains recent Solar Dynamics Observatory views with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on prominences in coronal cavities demonstrating horns.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Jet-torus connection in radio galaxies: Relativistic hydrodynamics and synthetic emission

High-resolution Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry observations of active galactic nuclei have revealed asymmetric structures in the jets of radio galaxies. These asymmetric structures may be due to internal asymmetries in the jet, could be induced by the different conditions in the surrounding ambient medium including the obscuring torus, or a combination of the two. In this paper we investigate the influence of the ambient medium (including the obscuring torus) on the observed properties of jets from radio galaxies. We performed special-relativistic hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of over-pressured and pressure-matched jets using the special-relativistic hydrodynamics code \texttt{Ratpenat}, which is based on a second-order accurate finite-volume method and an approximate Riemann solver. Using a newly developed emission code to compute the electromagnetic emission, we have investigated the influence of different ambient medium and torus configurations on the jet structure and subsequently computed the non-thermal emission produced by the jet and the thermal absorption due to the torus. To better compare the emission simulations with observations we produced synthetic radio maps, taking into account the properties of the observatory. The detailed analysis of our simulations shows that the observed asymmetries can be produced by the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium and by the absorption properties of the obscuring torus.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures, submitted to A&

A search for pulsars around Sgr A* in the first Event Horizon Telescope data set

In 2017 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observed the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), at a frequency of 228.1 GHz (λ = 1.3 mm). The fundamental physics tests that even a single pulsar orbiting Sgr A* would enable motivate searching for pulsars in EHT data sets. The high observing frequency means that pulsars—which typically exhibit steep emission spectra—are expected to be very faint. However, it also negates pulse scattering, an effect that could hinder pulsar detections in the Galactic center. Additionally, magnetars or a secondary inverse Compton emission could be stronger at millimeter wavelengths than at lower frequencies. We present a search for pulsars close to Sgr A* using the data from the three most sensitive stations in the EHT 2017 campaign: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Large Millimeter Telescope, and the IRAM 30 m Telescope. We apply three detection methods based on Fourier-domain analysis, the fast folding algorithm, and single-pulse searches targeting both pulsars and burst-like transient emission. We use the simultaneity of the observations to confirm potential candidates. No new pulsars or significant bursts were found. Being the first pulsar search ever carried out at such high radio frequencies, we detail our analysis methods and give a detailed estimation of the sensitivity of the search. We conclude that the EHT 2017 observations are only sensitive to a small fraction (≲2.2 of the pulsars that may exist close to Sgr A*, motivating further searches for fainter pulsars in the region

The effect of poloidal velocity shear on the local development of current-driven instabilities

We perform a local (short-wavelength) linear stability analysis of an axisymmetric column of magnetized plasma with a nearly toroidal magnetic field and a smooth poloidal velocity shear by perturbing the equations of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics. We identify two types of unstable modes, which we call 'exponential' and 'overstable', respectively. The exponential modes are present in the static equilibria and their growth rates decrease with increasing velocity shear. The overstable modes are driven by the effects of velocity shear and dominate the exponential modes for sufficiently high shear values. We argue that these local instabilities can provide an important energy dissipation mechanism in astrophysical relativistic jets. Strong co-moving velocity shear arises naturally in the magnetic acceleration mechanism, therefore it may play a crucial role in converting Poynting-flux-dominated jets into matter-dominated jets, regulating the global acceleration and collimation processes, and producing the observed emission of blazars and gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRA