Current Sheet Formation in the Interstellar Medium

Abstract

There is phenomenological evidence that magnetic reconnection operates in the interstellar medium, and magnetic reconnection is also necessary for the operation of a galactic dynamo. The extremely long ohmic diffusion times of magnetic fields in typical interstellar structures suggest that reconnection occurs in two stages, with thin current layers that have relatively short resistive decay times forming by magnetohydrodynamical processes first, followed by reconnection of the fields in the layers. We propose that ambipolar drift can lead to the formation of these thin sheets in weakly ionized interstellar gas and can delineate the parameter regime in which this occurs by means of a numerical model: we find that the magnetic field cannot be too large and the medium cannot be too diffusive. Both limits are imposed by the requirement that the field be wound up about 1 time by the eddy.