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Waves in current sheets
David Boddie (St Andrews)
Magnetoacoustic waves in a plasma in which the magnetic field is not
sharply structured can exist as hybrid waves, exhibiting the familiar
characteristics of both surface and body waves found in magnetic slab
structures. Using linear MHD theory, the dispersive nature of
small-amplitude waves is examined for the case of the Harris model of a
current sheet under various sets of equilibrium conditions. The
descriptions of such perturbations in these regimes are compared with
those from relevant slab models in order to determine the features which
are common to both types of model, and those which may be lost when moving
to a simplified physical description.
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