Geometrical shock dynamics, also called CCW theory, yields approximate equations for shock propagation in which only the conditions at the shock appear explicitly; the postshock flow is presumed approximately uniform and enters implicitly via a Riemann invariant. The nonrelativistic theory, formulated by G. B. Whitham and others, matches many experimental results surprisingly well. Motivated by...

We formulate a smoothed-particle hydrodynamics numerical method, traditionally used for the Euler equations for fluid dynamics in the context of astrophysical simulations, to solve the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the Madelung formulation. The probability density of the wave function is discretized into moving particles, whose properties are smoothed by a kernel function. The traditional f...

Time-dependent dynamical simulations related to convective motion in a spherical gap under a central force field due to the dielectrophoretic effect are discussed. This work is part of the preparation of the GEOFLOW-experiment which is planned to run in a microgravity environment. The goal of this experiment is the simulation of large-scale convective motion in a geophysical or astrophysical fr...

The multi-fluid plasma model only assumes local thermodynamic equilibrium within each fluid, e.g. ion and electron fluids for the two-fluid plasma model. Derivation of the MHD model involves several asymptotic and simplifying assumptions that can limit its applicability. Therefore, the two-fluid plasma model more accurately represents the appropriate physical processes. Physical parameters indi...

We describe ZEUS-MP: a Multi-Physics, Massively-Parallel, Message-Passing code for astrophysical fluid dynamics simulations in 3 dimensions. ZEUS-MP is a follow-on to the sequential ZEUS-2D and ZEUS-3D codes developed and disseminated by the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (lca.ncsa.uiuc.edu) at NCSA. V1.0 released 1/1/2000 includes the following physics modules: ideal hydrodynamics, ...

Article history: Received 15 November 2007 Received in revised form 14 November 2008 Accepted 23 December 2008 Available online 8 January 2009 PACS: 95.30.Lz 97.10.Bt 04.40.-b

This paper reviews the progress in understanding the fundamental physics of magnetic reconnection, focusing on significant results in the past decade from dedicated laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and space astrophysical observations. Particularly in the area of local reconnection physics, many important findings have been made with respect to two-fluid dynamics, the profile of t...