Magnetic reconnection mediated by hyper-resistive plasmoid instability

Magnetic reconnection mediated by the hyper-resistive plasmoid instability is studied with both linear analysis and nonlinear simulations. The linear growth rate is found to scale as $S_{H}^{1/6}$ with respect to the hyper-resistive Lundquist number $S_{H}\equiv L^{3}V_{A}/η_{H}$, where $L$ is the system size, $V_{A}$ is the Alfvén velocity, and $η_{H}$ is the hyper-resistivity. In the nonlinear regime, reconnection rate becomes nearly independent of $S_{H}$, the number of plasmoids scales as $S_{H}^{1/2}$, and the secondary current sheet length and width both scale as $S_{H}^{-1/2}$. These scalings are consistent with a heuristic argument assuming secondary current sheets are close to marginal stability. The distribution of plasmoids as a function of the enclosed flux $ψ$ is found to obey a $ψ^{-1}$ power law over an extended range, followed by a rapid fall off for large plasmoids. These results are compared with those from resistive magnetohydrodynamic studies.

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