Intermittent self-organization: Nonlinear responses of twisting multiple flux tubes

Abstract

A new type of self-organization is presented where a system evolves intermittently and undergoes self-adaptively local maxima and minima of energy state. Numerical study of nonlinear interactions of twisting multiple flux tubes have shown that each flux tube suffers from a helical kink instability, resulting in the formation of a knotted structure. The knotted deformation stimulates reconnection with a neighboring flux tube whereby kinetic and thermal energies are impulsively and markedly released. Repeating reconnection intermittently with surrounding field lines, the whole structure returns to the more or less originally separated flux tubes and thereafter repeats an intermittent and recursive evolution. All these results lead to a working hypothesis that in an open complex nonlinear system where energy is externally and continuously supplied, the system exhibits an intermittent self-organization, self-adapting local maxima and minima of energy state alternatively in temporal evolution. The present work will also forecast this as some essential concept to an energy conversion problem such as solar flares.