Acceleration and heating processes in a collapsing magnetic trap

Karlický, M. and T. Kosugi, Acceleration and heating processes in a collapsing magnetic trap, A&A, 419, 1159-1168 (2004) (ADS)

The cartoon

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The idea here is that as the result of magnetic reconnection, the "shrinking" magnetic flux system will act both to heat the confined gas adiabatically, and also to accelerate mirroring particles by the Fermi mechanism and by the betatron effect. This is an old idea, and not a bad one, because the restructuring of the coronal magnetic field certainly must include these effects. It is general enough that it does not require reconnection, in fact; an ideal MHD instability should also produce related effects - though to the Archivist's knowledge, nobody in our field has studied the effect (for example) of a kink instability on trapped particles.

Date: 2007 September 07

Update: 2019 November 24