Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

LAGRANGIAN RELAXATION SCHEMES FOR CALCULATING FORCE-FREE MAGNETIC FIELDS, AND THEIR LIMITATIONS

FREE ISSUE

D. I. Pontin1, G. Hornig1, A. L. Wilmot-Smith1 and I. J. D. Craig2

Show affiliations


Force-free magnetic fields are important in many astrophysical settings. Determining the properties of such force-free fields—especially smoothness and stability properties—is crucial to understanding many key phenomena in astrophysical plasmas, for example, energy release processes that heat the plasma and lead to dynamic or explosive events. In the present work we discuss a serious limitation on the computation of force-free fields, within the context of a Lagrangian relaxation scheme that conserves magnetic flux and ∇ centerdot B identically. This issue has the potential to invalidate the results produced by numerical force-free field solvers even for cases in which they appear to converge (at fixed grid resolution) to an equilibrium magnetic field. Error estimates are introduced to assess the quality of the calculated equilibrium. We go on to present an algorithm, based on rewriting the curl operation via Stokes' theorem, for calculating the current which holds great promise for improving dramatically the accuracy of the Lagrangian relaxation procedure.


Keywords

magnetic fields; methods: numerical; stars: coronae


Dates

Issue 2 (2009 August 1)

Received 2009 March 6, accepted for publication 2009 June 1

Published 2009 July 14



  1. Lagrangian Relaxation Schemes for Calculating Force-free Magnetic Fields, and Their Limitations

    D. I. Pontin et al. 2009 ApJ 700 1449

  2. Magnetic Braiding and Quasi-Separatrix Layers

    A. L. Wilmot-Smith et al. 2009 ApJ 704 1288

  3. Magnetic Braiding and Parallel Electric Fields

    A. L. Wilmot-Smith et al. 2009 ApJ 696 1339

  4. The Compact Central Object in the RX J0852.0–4622 Supernova Remnant

    George G. Pavlov et al 2001 ApJ 559 L131

  5. A single hollow-beam optical trap for cold atoms

    S Kulin et al 2001 J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt. 3 353

  6. The generation of 25.05 T using a 5.11 T Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox superconducting insert magnet

    H W Weijers et al 2004 Supercond. Sci. Technol. 17 636

  7. Enabling distributed petascale science

    Andrew Baranovski et al 2007 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 78 012020

  8. Production, chemical and isotopic separations of the long-lived isomer 178Hfm2 (T1/2=31 years)

    Yu Ts Oganessian et al 1992 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 18 393

  9. Hard hexagons: exact solution

    R J Baxter 1980 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 13 L61

  10. Rollercoaster loop shapes

    Ann-Marie Pendrill 2005 Phys. Educ. 40 517

Users also read

What's this?
This innovative new feature generates a list of articles 'also read' by other users based on them reading the original article. Article abstracts citations and references are all considered and weighted accordingly. We hope that this will help you find relevant papers for your research.

  1. Magnetic Braiding and Parallel Electric Fields

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.