Turbulent Magnetic Reconnection in Two Dimensions

TL;DR

This study uses 2D numerical simulations to explore how background turbulence influences magnetic reconnection, revealing conditions where turbulence significantly accelerates the process beyond classical models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that turbulence can weaken resistivity dependence and induce a critical threshold, leading to faster magnetic reconnection in 2D simulations.

Findings

Reconnection rate becomes less dependent on resistivity at certain turbulence levels.

A critical turbulence threshold enhances reconnection rate.

Reconnection can be nearly resistivity-independent under turbulence.

Abstract

Two-dimensional numerical simulations of the effect of background turbulence on 2D resistive magnetic reconnection are presented. For sufficiently small values of the resistivity ($\eta$) and moderate values of the turbulent power ($\epsilon$), the reconnection rate is found to have a much weaker dependence on $\eta$ than the Sweet-Parker scaling of $\eta^{1/2}$ and is even consistent with an $\eta-$independent value. For a given value of $\eta$, the dependence of the reconnection rate on the turbulent power exhibits a critical threshold in $\epsilon$ above which the reconnection rate is significantly enhanced.