Flow of a two-fluid plasma carrying a pulsed current in a steady-state magnetic field

The problem of the motion of plasma carrying a pulsed current in a steady-state magnetic field is solved in terms of two-fluid magnetohydrodynamics. The initial directions of the force and current vectors are determined, and the relations that determine their time evolution are obtained. The time dependences of the slope of the two-fluid plasma flow trajectory with respect to the one-fluid plasma motion direction are calculated. The smaller the ion mass in the plasma, the faster the decrease in the slope of the trajectory with time. The calculation results agree well with the data of our experiments [1–7] on studying the current sheets in 3D magnetic fields with an X line and support the necessity of taking into account the two-fluid properties of plasma when current sheets form in heavy inert gases.