High Lundquist Number Resistive MHD Simulations of Magnetic Reconnection: Searching for Secondary Island Formation

Abstract

Recently, secondary island formation due to the tearing instability of the Sweet-Parker current sheet was identified as a possible mechanism that can lead to fast reconnection (less sensitive dependence on Lundquist number $S$) both in numerical simulations using Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method [Daughton et al. 2009], as well as using resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) [Lapenta 2008; Bhattacharjee et al. 2009]. This instability is thought to appear when $S$ is greater than a certain threshold. These recent results prompt us to perform more resistive MHD simulations of a basic reconnection configuration based on the island coalescence instability, using much higher resolutions and larger $S$. Our simulations are based on a fairly standard pseudo spectral code, which has been tested for accuracy, convergence, and compared well with codes using other methods [Ng et al. 2008]. In our simulations, formation of plasmoids were not found, except when insufficient resolution was used, or when a small amount of noise was added externally. The reconnection rate is found to follow the Sweet-Parker scaling when no noise is added, but increases to a level independent of $S$ with noise, when plasmoids form. Latest results with $S$ up to $2 \times 10^5$ will be presented.