Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is a physical process in highly conducting plasmas in which the magnetic topology is rearranged and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. Magnetic reconnection occurs on timescales intermediate between slow resistive diffusion of the magnetic field and fast Alfvénic timescales.

The qualitative description of the reconnection process is such that magnetic field lines from different magnetic domains (defined by the field line connectivity) are spliced to one another, changing their patterns of connectivity with respect to the sources. It is a violation of an approximate conservation law in plasma physics, called the Alfvén's Theorem, and can concentrate mechanical or magnetic energy in both space and time. Solar flares, the largest explosions in the Solar System, may involve the reconnection of large systems of magnetic flux on the Sun, releasing, in minutes, energy that has been stored in the magnetic field over a period of hours to days. Magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere is one of the mechanisms responsible for the aurora, and it is important to the science of controlled nuclear fusion because it is one mechanism preventing magnetic confinement of the fusion fuel.

In an electrically conductive plasma, magnetic field lines are grouped into 'domains'— bundles of field lines that connect from a particular place to another particular place, and that are topologically distinct from other field lines nearby. This topology is approximately preserved even when the magnetic field itself is strongly distorted by the presence of variable currents or motion of magnetic sources, because effects that might otherwise change the magnetic topology instead induce eddy currents in the plasma; the eddy currents have the effect of canceling out the topological change.

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