2D stationary resistive MHD flows: Borderline to magnetic reconnection solutions Original Research Article

We present the basic equations for stationary, incompressible resistive MHD flows in two dimensions. This leads to a system of differential equations for two flux functions, one elliptic partial differential equation (Grad-Shafranov-like) for the magnetic flux function and one for the stream function of the flow. In these equations two potentials appear: one potential is a generalized pressure. The second potential couples the magnetic and the flow shear components of the system. With the restriction to flux or at least line conserving flows one has to solve a modified Ohm’s law. For the two-dimensional case these are two coupled differential equations, which represent the borderline between the resistive but flux conserving (or line conserving) case, and that of reconnective solutions. We discuss some simplified solutions of these equations.