The electromagnetic effect is studied on the short wavelength branch of the ion temperature gradient mode in the linear regime for the first time using a global gyrokinetic model. The short wavelength ion temperature gradient mode growth rate is found to be reduced in the presence of electromagnetic perturbations at finite plasma β. The effect on real frequency is found to be weak. The threshold value of ηi is found to increase for the mode as the magnitude of β is increased. The global mode structure of the short wavelength branch of the ion temperature gradient mode is compared with the conventional branch. The magnetic character of the mode, measured as the ratio of mode average square values of electromagnetic potential to electrostatic potential, is found to increase with increasing values of the plasma β. The mixing length estimate for flux shows that the maximum contribution still comes from the long wavelengths modes. The magnitude of the flux decreases with increasing β.

Using a 2D Viscoresistive Reduced MagnetoHydroDynamic model, the magnetic island coalescence problem is studied in the presence of in-plane, parallel shear flows. Extending the analytical work of Waelbroeck et al. [Phys. Plasmas 14, 022302 (2007)] and Throumoulopoulos et al., [J. Phys. A 42, 335501 (2009)] in the sub-Alfvénic flow shear regime for Fadeev equilibrium, the super-Alfvénic regime is studied for the first time numerically. A wide range of values of shear flow amplitudes and shear scale lengths have been considered to understand the effect of sub-Alfvénic and super-Alfvénic flows on the coalescence instability and its nonlinear fate. We find that for flow shear length scales greater than the magnetic island size, the maximum reconnection rate decreases monotonically from sub-Alfvénic to super-Alfvénic flow speeds. For scale lengths smaller than the island size, the reconnection rate decreases up to a critical value v0c, beyond which the shear flow is found to destabilize the islands. The value of v0c decreases with a decrease in the value of shear flow length scale. Interestingly, for our range of parameters, we find suppression of the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability in super-Alfvénic flows even when the shear scale length is smaller than the island width. Observation of velocity streamlines shows that the plasma circulation inside the islands has a stabilizing influence in strong shear flow cases. Plasma circulation is also found to be responsible for the decrease in upstream velocity, causing less pileup of magnetic flux on both sides of the reconnection sheet.

A 2D incompressible viscoresistive-MHD model [Mahapatra et al., Phys. Plasmas 28, 072103 (2021)] is used to study the scaling of reconnection parameters in the magnetic island coalescence problem under two interesting scenarios. First, the effect of changing island half-width at a fixed system size is investigated. As the island half-width increases, the total magnetic flux content of the islands increases, resulting in an increase in upstream magnetic field, upstream velocity field, and unnormalized reconnection rate. However, the downstream magnetic field, current sheet length and normalized reconnection rate (normalized to the upstream magnetic field and upstream Alfvénic velocity) remain independent of it. Interestingly, the reconnection rate is found to be different from the upstream to downstream velocity ratio as well as from the aspect ratio of the current sheet, as opposed to the findings of the Sweet–Parker model. Second, the in-plane shear flow effects are studied, keeping the island width and system size fixed. Here, thickness and length of the current sheet, the upstream magnetic and velocity field components, reconnection rate and time, current sheet inclination angle with shear flow length scale, and amplitude are calculated. Interestingly, the inclination angle of the current sheet and the diffusion region are found to be different, and the differences are more in stronger shear flows. These results are significantly different from the Harris sheet setup with shear flow.