Magnetic Reconnection at an X-point

What you are seeing: two oppositely directed magnetic fields driven together at an inflow speed $v_{\rm in}$ . In the thin yellow current sheet, frozen-in flux breaks and field lines reconnect across the X-point; the released magnetic tension ejects the plasma along the sheet as twin jets at the Alfven speed $v_A$

Figure 1. X-point reconnection of two anti-parallel magnetic field regions, with twin outflow jets along the current sheet. Method: kinematic flow + analytic hyperbolic field, Sweet-Parker scalings M_A = S^-1/2, delta = L / sqrt(S).

log10 eta-3.0

Alfven speed v_A1.0

presetcorona

tracer count120

WHAT TO TRY

Lower the resistivity log10 eta: the Lundquist number S soars and the current sheet thins, the regime where frozen-in field lines snap and reconnect at the X-point.
Switch to the Petschek-like preset: slow-mode shocks open the outflow and reconnection runs fast, the mechanism behind solar flares and magnetospheric substorms.
Watch the tracers accelerate through the X-point: magnetic energy converts to kinetic energy in the outflow jets at the Alfven speed, the engine of space-weather storms.