Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains

N. F. Loureiro (Princeton) , A. A. Schekochihin (Imperial) , S. C. Cowley (UCLA)

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classification 🌌 astro-ph physics.plasm-phphysics.space-ph

keywords currentformedinstabilitynumberscalessheetsalfvenchain

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Current sheets formed in magnetic reconnection events are found to be unstable to high-wavenumber perturbations. The instability is very fast: its maximum growth rate scales as S^{1/4} v_A/L, where L is the length of the sheet, v_A the Alfven speed and S the Lundquist number. As a result, a chain of plasmoids (secondary islands) is formed, whose number scales as S^{3/8}.

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Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

Tearing of charged current layers
astro-ph.HE 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

Charged current layers are electrostatically unstable with Bernstein waves redistributing charge and altering tearing, producing mildly charged plasmoids in Harris sheets and faster tearing in some rotational cases.