DIFFER
DIFFER EVENT

Self-organizing knots in plasmas

Magnetic helicity, a measure for the linking and knotting of magnetic field lines, is a conserved quantity in Ideal MHD. In the presence of resistivity, helicity constrains the rate at which magnetic energy can be dissipated. When a localized, helical magnetic field is set to relax in a low-resistance high-beta plasma, the magnetic pressure drives the plasma to expand whilst the helicity is still approximately conserved. Using numerical simulations I show how this interplay gives rise to a novel MHD equilibrium: the initially linked field lines self-organize to form a structure where field lines lie on nested toroidal surfaces of constant pressure. The Lorentz forces are balanced by the gradient in pressure, with a minimum in pressure on the magnetic axis. Interestingly, the rotational transform is nearly constant on all magnetic surfaces, making the structure topologically nearly identical to a famous knotted structure in Topology: the Hopf fibration.

Date
-
Location
seminar room
Speaker
Christopher Smiet
Affiliation
Leiden University

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