Self-Organizing Knotted Magnetic Structures in Plasma

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 stat...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2015-08, Vol.115 (9), p.095001-095001, Article 095001
Main Authors: Smiet, C B, Candelaresi, S, Thompson, A, Swearngin, J, Dalhuisen, J W, Bouwmeester, D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Energy density
Exact solutions
Hydrostatic pressure
Lorentz force
Magnetic fields
Magnetic islands
Mathematical analysis
Time
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.115.095001