Yoon Young Dae, Laishram Modhuchandra, Moore Thomas Earle, Yun Gunsu S
Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Pohang, Gyeongbuk 37673 South Korea.
Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Gyeongbuk 37673 South Korea.
Commun Phys. 2024;7(1):297. doi: 10.1038/s42005-024-01784-6. Epub 2024 Sep 3.
Magnetic flux ropes are pivotal structures and building blocks in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas, and various equilibrium models have thus been studied in the past. However, flux ropes in general form at non-equilibrium, and their pathway from formation to relaxation is a crucial process that determines their eventual properties. Here we show that any localized current parallel to a background magnetic field will evolve into a flux rope via non-equilibrium processes. The detailed kinetic dynamics are exhaustively explained through single-particle and Vlasov analyses and verified through particle-in-cell simulations. This process is consistent with many proposed mechanisms of flux rope generation such as magnetic reconnection. A spacecraft observation of an example flux rope is also presented; by invoking the non-equilibrium process, its structure and properties can be explicated down to all six components of the temperature tensor.
磁通量绳是天体物理和实验室等离子体中的关键结构和组成部分，因此过去已经研究了各种平衡模型。然而，通量绳一般在非平衡状态下形成，其从形成到弛豫的过程是决定其最终性质的关键过程。在这里，我们表明，任何平行于背景磁场的局部电流都会通过非平衡过程演变成通量绳。通过单粒子和弗拉索夫分析详尽地解释了详细的动力学，并通过粒子模拟进行了验证。这个过程与许多提出的通量绳产生机制（如磁重联）是一致的。还展示了对一个示例通量绳的航天器观测；通过调用非平衡过程，可以将其结构和性质解释到温度张量的所有六个分量。
