Capturing reconnection phenomena using generalized Eulerian-Lagrangian description in Navier-Stokes and resistive MHD

Carlos Cartes*, Miguel D. Bustamante, Annick Pouquet, Marc E. Brachet

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

New generalized equations of motion for the Weber-Clebsch potentials that describe both the Navier-Stokes and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) dynamics are derived. These depend on a new parameter, which has dimensions of time for Navier-Stokes and inverse velocity for MHD. Direct numerical simulations (DNSs) are performed. For Navier-Stokes, the generalized formalism captures the intense reconnection of vortices of the Boratav, Pelz and Zabusky (BPZ) flow, in agreement with the previous study by Ohkitani and Constantin. For MHD, the new formalism is used to detect magnetic reconnection in several flows: the three-dimensional (3D) Arnold, Beltrami and Childress (ABC) flow and the (2D and 3D) Orszag-Tang (OT) vortex. It is concluded that periods of intense activity in the magnetic enstrophy are correlated with periods of increasingly frequent resettings. Finally, the positive correlation between the sharpness of the increase in resetting frequency and the spatial localization of the reconnection region is discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number011404
JournalFluid Dynamics Research
Volume41
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Small-scale structure
  • Numerical simulations
  • Dynamics

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