Plasmoids formation during simulations of coaxial helicity injection in the National Spherical Torus Experiment
arXiv:2203.16018 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.205003
Abstract
Formation of an elongated Sweet-Parker current sheet and a transition to plasmoid instability has for the first time been predicted by simulations in a large-scale toroidal fusion plasma in the absence of any pre-existing instability. Plasmoid instability is demonstrated through resistive MHD simulations of transient Coaxial Helicity Injection (CHI) experiments in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX).Consistent with the theory, fundamental characteristics of the plasmoid instability, including fast reconnection rate, have been observed in these realistic simulations. Motivated by the simulations, experimental camera images have been revisited and suggest the existence of reconnecting plasmoids in NSTX. Global, system-size plasmoid formation observed here should also have strong implications for astrophysical reconnection, such as rapid eruptive solar events.
arXiv comment5 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (11)
- Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains
- Fast Reconnection in High-Lundquist-Number Plasmas Due to Secondary Tearing Instabilities
- Plasmoid-Induced-Reconnection and Fractal Reconnection
- Scaling laws of resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection in the high-Lundquist-number, plasmoid-unstable regime
- Formation of Plasmoid Chains in Magnetic Reconnection
- Phase Diagram for Magnetic Reconnection in Heliophysical, Astrophysical and Laboratory Plasmas
- Magnetic reconnection and stochastic plasmoid chains in high-Lundquist-number plasmas
- Self-Feeding Turbulent Magnetic Reconnection on Macroscopic Scales
- A catastrophe model for fast magnetic reconnection onset
- X-point collapse and saturation in the nonlinear tearing mode reconnection
- Reconnection of a kinking flux rope triggering the ejection of a microwave and hard X-ray source. I. Observations and Interpretation
Cited by in corpus (15)
- General Theory of the Plasmoid Instability
- Magnetic reconnection in the era of exascale computing and multiscale experiments
- Plasmoid Instability in Forming Current Sheets
- Visco-Resistive Plasmoid Instability
- Influence of 3D plasmoid dynamics on the transition from collisional to kinetic reconnection
- Nonlinear reconnecting edge localized modes in tokamaks
- Dynamo-driven plasmoid formation from a current-sheet instability
- On the performance of exponential integrators for problems in magnetohydrodynamics
- A Maximum Entropy Principle for inferring the Distribution of 3D Plasmoids
- Plasmoid-mediated reconnection during nonlinear peeling-ballooning edge-localized modes
- An Alfvenic reconnecting plasmoid thruster
- Onset of Plasmoid Reconnection during Magnetorotational Instability
- Enhanced toroidal flow stabilization of edge localized modes with increased plasma density
- Effects of Plasmoid Formation on Sawtooth Process in a Tokamak
- Stabilizing effect of enhanced resistivity on peeling-ballooning instabilities on EAST