Detailed analysis of fan-shaped jets in three dimensional numerical simulation

Abstract

We performed three dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations to study the magnetic reconnection using an initially shearing magnetic field configuration (force free field with a current sheet in the middle of the computational box). It is shown that there are two types of reconnection jets: the ordinary reconnection jets and fan-shaped jets, which are formed along the guide magnetic field. The fan-shaped jets are significantly different from the ordinary reconnection jets which are ejected by magnetic tension force. There are two driving forces for accelerating the fan-shaped jets. One is the Lorentz force which initially dominates the motion of fluid elements, and then the gas pressure gradient force accelerates the fluid elements in the later stage. The dependence on magnetic reconnection angle and resistivity value has also been studied. The formation and evolution of these jets provide a new understanding of dynamic magnetohydrodynamic jets.