HR: 11:25h
AN: SM32A-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Patchy Reconnection in a Solar Post-CME Current Sheet
AU: * Linton, M
EM: linton@taiyoh.nrl.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Lab, 4555 Overlook Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20375
AU: Longcope, D
EM: dana@physics.montana.edu
AF: Montana State University, Physics Department, Bozeman, MT 59717
AB: We study the dynamics of multiple, highly localized reconnection events in a post coronal mass ejection type current sheet. We impose the reconnection in an MHD simulation by enhancing the resistivity in small regions for a short time, thus allowing a finite amount of flux to reconnect. This forms a pair of 3D reconnected flux tubes piercing the current sheet. These tubes then retract from the reconnection region, pushing their way through the surrounding magnetic field. We will study how these tubes react when they collide with each other, and when they reach the edge of the current sheet and collide with the field there. We will use this model to study the theory that the descending post-eruption voids seen by TRACE and LASCO (see e.g. Sheeley et al 2004) are in fact reconnected flux tubes from patchy reconnection. This work has been supported by NASA and ONR.
DE: 7509 Corona
DE: 7519 Flares
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection
DE: 7843 Numerical simulation studies
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly