HR: 09:38h
AN: SM21C-07 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Magnetic Reconnection in Coronal Processes
AU: * Dahlburg, R B
EM: rdahlbur@lcp.nrl.navy.mil
AF: LCP&FD, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375-5344 United States
AB: The evolution of the solar corona is influenced strongly by magnetic reconnection at current sheets. I will discuss some recent research into the role and importance of magnetic reconnection and current sheets in the heating of the solar corona, which relies on the transfer, storage and dissipation of the mechanical energy present in photospheric motion, and in the acceleration of the slow solar wind above helmet streamers. In the first example, nonlinear interactions couple coronal magnetic fields to the photospheric velocity field leading to the formation of current sheets. The resulting magnetic reconnection determines both the rate of heating and the resulting coronal topology. In the second example, linear resistive instabilities can develop in current sheets found near the cusp of helmet streamers. Reconnection produces massive plasmoids which accelerate to the speed of the slow solar wind.
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2748 Magnetotail boundary layers
DE: 2764 Plasma sheet
DE: 7509 Corona
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005