A method for determining the locations and configurations of magnetic reconnection within three-dimensional turbulent plasmas

Abstract

Context. Three-dimensional (3D) reconnection is an important mechanism for efficiently releasing energy during astrophysical eruptive events, which is difficult to be quantitatively analyzed especially within turbulent plasmas. Aims. In this paper, an efficient method for identifying locations and configurations of 3D reconnection from magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) data is developed. Methods. This method analyzes the local nonideal electric field and magnetic structure at an arbitrary position. As only performing algebraical manipulations on the discrete field data and avoiding computationally expensive operations such as field-line tracing and root-finding, this method naturally possesses high efficiency. To validate this method, we apply it to the 3D data from a high-resolution simulation of a Harris-sheet reconnection and a data-driven simulation of a coronal flux rope eruption. Results. It is shown that this method can precisely identify the local structures of discrete magnetic field. Through the information of nonideal electric field and the geometric attributes of magnetic field, the local structures of reconnection sites can be effectively and comprehensively determined. For fine turbulent processes, both qualitative pictures and quantitative statistical properties of small-scale reconnection structures can be obtained. For large-scale solar simulations, macro-scale magnetic structures such as flux ropes and eruption current sheets can also be recognized. Conclusions. We develop a powerful method to analyze multi-scale structures of 3D reconnection. It can be applied not only in MHD simulations but also in kinetic simulations, plasma experiments, and in situ observations.