Self-Organizing Knotted Magnetic Structures in Plasma.
Phys Rev Lett
; 115(9): 095001, 2015 Aug 28.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-26371659
ABSTRACT
We perform full-magnetohydrodynamics simulations on various initially helical configurations and show that they reconfigure into a state where the magnetic field lines span nested toroidal surfaces. This relaxed configuration is not a Taylor state, as is often assumed for relaxing plasma, but a state where the Lorentz force is balanced by the hydrostatic pressure, which is lowest on the central ring of the nested tori. Furthermore, the structure is characterized by a spatially slowly varying rotational transform, which leads to the formation of a few magnetic islands at rational surfaces. We then obtain analytic expressions that approximate the global structure of the quasistable linked and knotted plasma configurations that emerge, using maps from S^{3} to S^{2} of which the Hopf fibration is a special case. The knotted plasma configurations have a highly localized magnetic energy density and retain their structure on time scales much longer than the Alfvénic time scale.
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Phys Rev Lett
Ano de publicação:
2015
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Holanda