THE OBSERVATION OF ISOLATED LONG-LIVED CURRENT FILAMENTS IN 2-DIMENSIONAL MICROTEARING TURBULENCE

Long-lived isolated current filaments are found to evolve from an initially random current distribution in a numerical simulation of 2-D microtearing, i.e., coupled electron density and flux evolution similar to two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). These filaments arise under the constraint of mean square flux conservation with negligible resistive dissipation and finite cross-field particle diffusivity. The kurtosis of current is found to be large (>> 3) indicating strongly non-Gaussian or intermittent behavior. Isolated filaments appear to be force-free. Like sign filaments are observed to attract and merge.