Scientists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory conducted the world's largest simulation of turbulence in
The researchers used computermodeling to recreate the reconnection - the reconnection of the star's magnetic field lines emanating from different domains. This process separates and violently reconnects the magnetic fields in the star's plasma. The researchers note that traditional observations using ground and even space observatories do not provide sufficient resolution to observe this process in great detail.
Physicists used 200 million hours of computertime for the world's largest simulation of the heating of the solar atmosphere. The simulations showed how the rapid reconnection of magnetic field lines converts large-scale turbulent energy into small internal energy. As a consequence, turbulent energy is efficiently converted into thermal energy on small scales, leading to overheating of the corona.
During the simulation, scientists tear andconnect magnetic field lines to generate chains of small twisted lines called plasmoids. This changes the understanding of the turbulent energy cascade, which has been widespread for more than half a century, the authors of the study note. The results of the work relate the rate of energy transfer to how fast the plasmoids grow, enhancing the transfer of energy from large scales to small ones and heating the corona strongly at these scales.
When the reconnection process is slow andthe turbulent cascade is fast, switching magnetic fields cannot affect energy transfer, the study authors say. But when the reclosing rate becomes high enough, it can more efficiently convert energy into internal energy, heating the particles.
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Cover image: NASA/SDO/AIA