Similarity considerations and conservation laws for magneto-static atmospheres

The equations of magnetohydrostatic equilibria for a plasma in a gravitational field are investigated analytically. For equilibria with one ignorable spatial coordinate, the equations reduce to a single nonlinear elliptic equation for the magnetic potential. Similarity solutions of the elliptic equation are obtained for the case of an isothermal atmosphere in a uniform gravitational field. The solutions are obtained from a consideration of the invariance group of the elliptic equation. The importance of symmetries of the elliptic equation also appears in the determination of conservation laws. It turns out that the elliptic equation can be written as a variational principle, and the symmetries of the variational functional lead (via Noether's theorem) to conservation laws for the equation. As an example of the application of the similarity solutions, a model magnetostatic atmosphere is constructed in which the current density J is proportional to the cube of the magnetic potential, and falls off exponentially with distance vertical to the base, with an 'e-folding' distance equal to the gravitational scale height. The solutions show the interplay between the gravitational force, the J x B force (B, magnetic field induction) and the gas pressure gradient.