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Bachelor Project: Benchmarking of Magnetic Reconnection
| Hovedfag: | Astronomi |
| Fagområd | Numerisk astrofysik |
| Vejleder: | Klaus Galsgaard |
| Forudsætninge | Kendskab til computere -- men programmeringsfærdighede er ikke nødvendige |
| Tidsrum: | Forår 2008 |
| Sted: | Rockefeller |
| Holdstørrelse | 2-3 |
| Tilmeldte studenter: | |
| Projektbeskrivelse: | Magnetic fields are found all over space where the plasma is electrically conducting. In most of space the plasma and magnetic fields are frozen into each other, allowing particles only to drift along the magnetic field lines. Dependent on where in space we look, the plasma parameters are such that it is the plasma force, the gas pressure, that determines the time evolution of the plasma. In these regions the magnetic field is advected passively with the flow, distorting the magnetic field lines into complicated shapes. In particular localised regions this frozen in condition can break down and the magnetic field lines decouple from the plasma, allowing the field line connectivity to change. This process, known as magnetic reconnection, is very important for releasing some of the free energy contained in the magnetic field and transform this into systematic plasma motions, plasma heating and particle acceleration. In the most used approximations for the description of a plasma -- the Magneto-Hydro-Dynamic approximation -- this process is typically described by an ad-hoc parameterization of the resistivity in the magnetic plasma. A few different methods are used in numerical experiments, resulting in different evolution patterns of the process. The idea is to take a well described 2D reconnection experiment and compare the time development using the different approximations for the magnetic resistivity. Doing this with the same numerical code will allow us to describe the characteristic differences between the various approaches. |
| Faglige perspektiver: | Introduction to the MHD equations, magnetic reconnection and data visualisation using IDL. Familiarity with the Danish Center for Scientific Computing (DCSC-KU). A small amount of Fortran programming. |
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