On super-elastic collisions between large-scale magnetized plasmoids in the heliosphere

Abstract

Recently, a unique collision between two large-scale magnetized plasmoids produced by coronal mass ejections in the heliosphere has been observed (C. Shen et al. Nature 8, 2012). Results suggest that the collision is super-elastic, i.e. the total linear kinetic energy of the two plasmoids after the collision is larger than before the collision, and that an anti-correlation exists, i.e. the lower the initial relative velocity of the plasmoids, the larger the relative increase in total kinetic energy. Following an old suggestion of W. H. Bostick, IEEE Trans. Plasma Science PS-14 703-717 (1986), here we start from first principles, retrieve some results of D. Kagan et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 406 1140-1145 (2010) and S. Ohsaki et al., Ap. J. Lett. 559 L61 (2001) and show that the anti-correlation is just a consequence of Hall magnetohydrodynamics.

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