Description
Current sheets play an important role in many aspects of solar and space plasma activity. For example, a vast number of collisionless current sheets can be observed in the solar wind (e.g. Vasko et al., 2022). A common problem in the context of collisionless current sheets is having to find particle distribution functions which self-consistently generate a known magnetic field profile.
We shall present an analytical approach to this problem for a one-dimensional force-free current sheet equilibrium. One component of our magnetic field has the same hyperbolic tangent profile as the well-known Harris sheet (Harris, 1962). For a one-dimensional force-free field the guide field component then must vary in such a way that the magnitude of the magnetic field is constant. Distribution functions have been found for the case where the guide field approaches zero at infinity (e.g. Harrison & Neukirch, 2009; Allanson et al., 2015). However, no distribution functions have yet been found for the case where the guide field tends to a non-zero constant outside the current sheet. We present a novel method to find such distribution functions and will present some first results.
Allanson, O., Neukirch, T., Wilson, F., and Troscheit, S., 2015, PoP 22, 102116.
Harris, E.G., 1962, Nuovo Cim. 23, 115.
Harrison, M.G. and Neukirch, T., 2009, PRL 102, 135003.
Vasko, I., Alimov, K., Phan, T., Bale, S.D., Mozer, F.S., and Artemyev, A.V., 2022, ApJ 926, L19.