Plasma heating by discontinuous MHD flows in the vicinity of a magnetic reconnection region

An expression that explicitly describes variations in the internal energy of the plasma that flows through a discontinuity is derived based on the complete system of boundary conditions for the MHD equations on the discontinuity surface. The dependence of the plasma heating on the magnetic field density and configuration in the vicinity of the discontinuity surface (i.e., on the MHD flow type) is studied. The conditions of plasma heating at discontinuities in a self-consistent analytical model of magnetic reconnection are discussed.