Magnetic Stress in Solar System Plasmas

Abstract

Magnetic stresses play an important role in the dynamics of geophysical systems, from deep inside the Earth to the tenuous plasmas of deep space. In the magnetic dynamos inside the sun and the planets, the magnetic stresses of necessity rival the interior mechanical stresses. In solar system plasmas, magnetic stresses play critical roles in the transfer of mass, momentum and energy from one region to another. Coronal mass ejections are rapidly expelled from the sun and their interplanetary manifestations plough through the pre-existing solar wind. Some of these structures resemble flux ropes, bundles of magnetic field wrapped around a central core, and some of these appear to be almost force-free. These structures and similar ones in planetary magnetospheres appear to be created by the mechanism of magnetic reconnection. Solar system plasmas generally organise themselves in giant cells in which the properties are rather uniform, separated by thin current layers across which the properties change rapidly. When the magnetic field on the two sides of one of these current layers changes direction significantly (by over 90°), the magnetic field on opposite sides of the boundary may become linked across the current sheet. If the resulting magnetic stress can accelerate the plasma out of the reconnection region, the process will continue uninterrupted. If not, the process will shut itself off. Such continuous reconnection can occur at the Earth’s magnetopause and those of the magnetised planets. Reconnection in the terrestrial magnetotail current sheet and the jovian current sheet occurs in a setting in which the flow can be blocked on one side, causing reconnection to be inherently time-varying. At Jupiter, this mechanism also separates heavy ions from magnetospheric flux tubes so that the ions can escape but Jupiter can retain its magnetic field. Despite the very wide range of parameters and scales encountered in heliospheric plasmas, there is surprising coherence in the mechanisms in these varying environments.