Magnetic Reconnection: Applications to Sawtooth Oscillations, Error Field Induced Islands and the Dynamo Effect

The research goals of this project include producing a unique high performance code and using this code to study magnetic reconnection in astrophysical plasmas, in smaller scale laboratory experiments, and in fusion devices. The modular code that will be developed will be a fully three-dimensional, compressible Hall MHD code with options to run in slab, cylindrical and toroidal geometry and flexible enough to allow change in algorithms as needed. The code will use adaptive grid refinement, will run on massively parallel computers, and will be portable and scalable. The research goals include studies that will provide increased understanding of sawtooth oscillations in tokamaks, magnetotail substorms, error-fields in tokamaks, reverse field pinch dynamos, astrophysical dynamos, and laboratory reconnection experiments.

Institutions Involved

• University of Iowa
• University of Chicago
• University of Texas Austin

Principal Investigator

Amitava Bhattacharjee
University of Iowa
amitava-bhattacharjee@uiowa.edu

Publications

Reports