Magnetic reconnection via tearing instability in a rotating viscous fluid

Abstract

The resistive tearing instability of a sheet pinch, first investigated by Kuang & Roberts (1990) for the case of a rapidly rotating inviscid fluid, is studied for arbitrary rotation rate in a visco-resistive fluid. Altogether there are three regimes of the resistive tearing instability which correspond to the particular parameter domain in the (Ω, Pm) plane. Here Ω is the angular velocity of the medium which is normalized to the Alfvén time and Pm is the magnetic Prandtl number.