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Temporary topological trapping and escape of charged particles in a flux tube as a cause of delay in time asymptotic transport
Author(s) -
Tooprakai P.,
Chuychai P.,
Minnie J.,
Ruffolo D.,
Bieber J. W.,
Matthaeus W. H.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2007gl030672
Subject(s) - trapping , physics , turbulence , test particle , magnetic field , flux (metallurgy) , charged particle , field line , magnetic flux , particle (ecology) , field (mathematics) , mechanics , computational physics , classical mechanics , ion , quantum mechanics , materials science , ecology , oceanography , mathematics , pure mathematics , metallurgy , biology , geology
The scenario of temporary trapping of magnetic field lines and their subsequent suppressed diffusive escape from topological magnetic structures embedded in turbulence has been offered as a way to understand the persistence of “dropouts”, or sharp gradients in observed heliospheric energetic particle intensities. Here a set of numerical experiments is carried out to show the basic physics of this process: charged test particles can be temporarily trapped in flux tubes and then escape due to random turbulent perturbations in the magnetic field. The overall effect is a delay in the onset of time‐asymptotic transport. We thus confirm that previous arguments based on field line transport are also applicable to test particle transport.