Turbulent Magnetohydrodynamic Reconnection Mediated by the Plasmoid Instability (1512.01520v1)

Abstract: It has been established that the Sweet-Parker current layer in high Lundquist number reconnection is unstable to the super-Alfv\'enic plasmoid instability. Past two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations have demonstrated that the plasmoid instability leads to a new regime where the Sweet-Parker current layer changes into a chain of plasmoids connected by secondary current sheets, and the averaged reconnection rate becomes nearly independent of the Lundquist number. In this work, three-dimensional simulation with a guide field shows that the additional degree of freedom allows plasmoid instabilities to grow at oblique angles, which interact and lead to self-generated turbulent reconnection. The averaged reconnection rate in the self-generated turbulent state is of the order of a hundredth of the characteristic Alfv\'en speed, which is similar to the two-dimensional result but is an order of magnitude lower than the fastest reconnection rate reported in recent studies of externally driven three-dimensional turbulent reconnection. Kinematic and magnetic energy fluctuations both form elongated eddies along the direction of local magnetic field, which is a signature of anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Both energy fluctuations satisfy power-law spectra in the inertial range, where the magnetic energy spectral index is in the range from $-2.3$ to $-2.1$, while the kinetic energy spectral index is slightly steeper, in the range from $-2.5$ to $-2.3$. The anisotropy of turbulence eddies is found to be nearly scale-independent, in contrast with the prediction of the Goldreich-Sridhar theory for anisotropic turbulence in a homogeneous plasma permeated by a uniform magnetic field.