Animations of Reconnection Solutions


See the link below for animations of transient reconnective disturbances in the vicinity of a pair of 3D null points, connected by a separator, which lies in the fan plane of each null. The animations were created by Ian Craig and David Pontin. Animations of dynamic reconnection in the presence of a magnetically connected null point pair.
The following animations were created by Ian Craig, Paul Watson, and Jacob Heerikhuisen. Run1 and Run2 show the magical reconnection of magnetic field lines in 2D periodic magnetic plasmas. The relaxation of a stressed X-point configuration in the absence of resistivity to a Y-point is shown in the third animation.

A JavaScript-capable browser is required to view the animations. You should also make sure that the options on your browser are set so that all images are automatically loaded. Since each animation requires about 2000k of memory we recommend setting your browser's memory cache to at least 2Mb.

Results from Run 2 (these results are more interesting than those from Run 1)

Results from Run 1

X-point relaxing to Y-point

Numerical current sheet comparison with analytic