Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 795, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/795/2/127
Keywords
magnetic reconnection; magnetohydrodynamics (MHD); plasmas; Sun: corona; turbulence
Categories
Funding
- US DOE [DE-SC0003888]
- DOE [DE-SC0001794]
- NSF [PHY-0903872]
- NSF Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas at U. Wisconsin-Madison
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) UK
- Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin under the NSF-Teragrid Project [TG-PHY080013N]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0003888] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- STFC [ST/K000853/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/K000853/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Physics [0821899] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We investigate the intermittency of energy dissipation in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence by identifying dissipative structures and measuring their characteristic scales. We find that the probability distribution of energy dissipation rates exhibits a power-law tail with an index very close to the critical value of -2.0, which indicates that structures of all intensities contribute equally to energy dissipation. We find that energy dissipation is uniformly spread among coherent structures with lengths and widths in the inertial range. At the same time, these structures have thicknesses deep within the dissipative regime. As the Reynolds number is increased, structures become thinner and more numerous, while the energy dissipation continues to occur mainly in large-scale coherent structures. This implies that in the limit of high Reynolds number, energy dissipation occurs in thin, tightly packed current sheets which nevertheless span a continuum of scales up to the system size, exhibiting features of both coherent structures and nanoflares previously conjectured as a coronal heating mechanism.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available