Sweet's mechanism in the solar wind

Sweet (1956, 1958) proposed a mechanism for the rapid, steady-state dissipation of a magnetic field in a resistive plasma. It is shown that Sweet's mechanism operates in the interplanetary medium near 1 AU in structures which Burlaga and Ness (1968) have identified and called D-sheets. The basic equations are considered of a specific mathematical model provided by Parker (1963) for the case of antiparallel fields and incompressible flow. The theoretical conclusions are related to interplanetary observations.