We study the effects of turbulence on magnetic reconnection using three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. This is the first attempt to test a model of fast magnetic reconnection in the presence of weak turbulence proposed by . This model predicts that weak turbulence, which is generically present in most of astrophysical systems, enhances the rate of reconnection by reducing the transverse scale for reconnection events and by allowing many independent flux reconnection events to occur simultaneously. As a result the reconnection speed becomes independent of Ohmic resistivity and is determined by the magnetic field wandering induced by turbulence. We test the dependence of the reconnection speed on turbulent power, the energy injection scale and resistivity.We study the reconnection model with the open and experiment with the outflow boundary conditions and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of various setups. To test our results, we also perform simulations of turbulence with the same outflow boundaries but without a large scale field reversal, thus without large scale reconnection. To quantify the reconnection speed we use both an intuitive definition, i.e. the speed of the reconnected flux inflow, as well as a more sophisticated definition based on a formally derived analytical expression. Our results confirm the predictions of the Lazarian & Vishniac model. In particular, we find that the reconnection speed is proportional to the square root of the injected power, as predicted by the model. The dependence on the injection scale for some of our models is a bit weaker than expected, i.e. l 3/4 inj , compared to the predicted linear dependence on the injection scale, which may require some refinement of the model or may be due to the effects like finite size of the excitation region, which are not a part of the model. The reconnection speed was found to depend on the expected rate of magnetic field wandering and not on the magnitude of the guide field. In our models, we see no dependence on the guide field when its strength is comparable to the reconnected component. More importantly, while in the absence of turbulence we successfully reproduce the Sweet-Parker scaling of reconnection, in the presence of turbulence we do not observe any dependence on Ohmic resistivity, confirming that the reconnection of weakly stochastic field is fast. We also do not observe a dependence on anomalous resistivity, which suggests that the presence of anomalous effects, e.g. Hall MHD effects, may be irrelevant for astrophysical systems with weakly stochastic magnetic fields.

Context. Recent Hi and Hα observations of NGC 4522 have revealed that this spiral galaxy represents one of the best cases of ongoing ram pressure stripping in the Virgo cluster. Aims. We determined the parameters of the interaction between the interstellar medium of NGC 4522 and the intracluster medium of the Virgo cluster. Methods. A dynamical model including ram pressure stripping is applied to the strongly Hi deficient Virgo spiral galaxy NGC 4522. A carefully chosen model snapshot is compared with existing VLA Hi observations. Results. The model successfully reproduces the large-scale gas distribution and the velocity field. However it fails to reproduce the large observed Hi linewidths in the extraplanar component, for which we give possible explanations. In a second step, we solve the induction equation on the velocity fields of the dynamical model and calculate the large scale magnetic field. Assuming a Gaussian distribution of relativistic electrons we obtain the distribution of polarized radio continuum emission which is also compared with our VLA observations at 6 cm. The observed maximum of the polarized radio continuum emission is successfully reproduced. Our model suggests that the ram pressure maximum occurred only ∼50 Myr ago. Conclusions. Since NGC 4522 is located far away from the cluster center (∼1 Mpc) where the intracluster medium density is too low to cause the observed stripping if the intracluster medium is static and smooth, two scenarios are envisaged: (i) the galaxy moves very rapidly within the intracluster medium and is not even bound to the cluster; in this case the galaxy has just passed the region of highest intracluster medium density; (ii) the intracluster medium is not static but moving due to the infall of the M 49 group of galaxies. In this case the galaxy has just passed the region of highest intracluster medium velocity. This study shows the strength of combining high resolution Hi and polarized radio continuum emission with detailed numerical modeling of the evolution of the gas and the large-scale magnetic field.

We present the first numerical model of the magnetohydrodynamical cosmic-ray (CR) driven dynamo of the type proposed by Parker (1992). The driving force of the amplification process comes from CRs injected into the galactic disk in randomly distributed spherical regions representing supernova remnants. The underlying disk is differentially rotating. An explicit resistivity is responsible for the dissipation of the small-scale magnetic field component. We obtain amplification of the large-scale magnetic on a timescale 250 Myr.

Aims. We present a parameter study of the magnetohydrodynamical-dynamo driven by cosmic rays in the interstellar medium (ISM), focusing on the efficiency of magnetic-field amplification and the issue of energy equipartition between magnetic, kinetic, and cosmicray (CR) energies. Methods. We perform numerical CR-MHD simulations of the ISM using an extended version of ZEUS-3D code in the shearingbox approximation and taking into account the presence of Ohmic resistivity, tidal forces, and vertical disk gravity. CRs are supplied in randomly-distributed supernova (SN) remnants and are described by the diffusion-advection equation, which incorporates an anisotropic diffusion tensor. Results. The azimuthal magnetic flux and total magnetic energy are amplified in the majority of models depending on a particular choice of model parameters. We find that the most favorable conditions for magnetic-field amplification correspond to magnetic diffusivity of the order of 3 × 10 25 cm 2 s −1 , SN rates close to those observed in the Milky Way, periodic SN activity corresponding to spiral arms, and highly anisotropic and field-aligned CR diffusion. The rate of magnetic-field amplification is relatively insensitive to the magnitude of SN rates spanning a range of 10% to 100% of realistic values. The timescale of magnetic-field amplification in the most favorable conditions is 150 Myr, at a galactocentric radius equal to 5 kpc, which is close to the timescale of galactic rotation. The final magnetic-field energies reached in the efficient amplification cases fluctuate near equipartition with the gas kinetic energy. In all models CR energy exceeds the equipartition values by a least an order of magnitude, in contrast to the commonly expected equipartition. We suggest that the excess of cosmic rays in numerical models can be attributed to the fact that the shearing box does not permit cosmic rays to leave the system along the horizontal magnetic field, as may be the case for true galaxies.

Abstract.A fully three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) model is applied to simulate the evolution of the large-scale magnetic field in cluster galaxies interacting with the intra-cluster medium (ICM). As the model input we use time-dependent gas velocity fields resulting from 3D N-body sticky-particle simulations of a galaxy. The modeled clouds are affected by the ram pressure due to their rapid motion through the ICM in the central part of a cluster. Numerical simulations have shown that after the initial compression phase due to ram pressure, a process of gas re-accretion onto the galactic disk takes place. We find that the gas re-accretion leads to an increase of the total magnetic energy without any dynamo action. The simulated magnetic fields are used to construct the model maps of high-frequency (Faraday rotation-free) polarized radio emission. We show that the evolution of the polarized intensity shows features that are characteristic of different evolutionary stages of an ICM-ISM interaction. The comparison of polarized radio continuum emission maps with our model permits us to determine whether the galaxy is in the compression or in the re-accretion phase. It also provides an important constraint upon the dynamical modeling of ICM-ISM interactions.