Slip-Running Reconnection in Quasi-Separatrix Layers

Aulanier, G., E. Pariat, P. Démoulin, and C. R. DeVore, Slip-Running Reconnection in Quasi-Separatrix Layers, Sol. Phys., 238, 347-376 (2006) (ADS)

The cartoon

(click on the image for a larger version)

This cartoon, for the first time in our Archive, consists of one frame of a cartoon movie. This might be construed as a breakthrough in cartoon technology, but the Archivist is dubious: do the computations cease when the simulations sufficiently resemble a real cartoon, which in turn purports to represent the observations? This Archive accordingly does not include many items from numerical simulations. It is a pity, because one can easily generate movies this way, whereas animated cartoons are not common.

      The paper in which this cartoon appears introduces the term "slip-running," which is evocative and graceful, the Archivist thinks, wondering whether it's the direct translation of a nice French term, or whether a felicitous use of English directly. In any case it is a new take on an old scheme, the CSHKP idea of large-scale magnetic reconnection as a source of flare energy. The paper argues that the point of reconnection - modeled, of course, with no regard to the microphysics! - can slide along super-Alfvenically, sort of like a superluminal expansion. Maybe so, but the associated movie (see the paper for a link) clearly takes liberties with the concept of the field line, since its motion can only be defined in terms of the plasma associated with it. So the apparent motions in the movie are more like a conflagration wave than a physical motion and the field lines do not correctly represent this action.

Date: 2009 October 02

Update: 2019 November 18