Turbulent Reconnection in Relativistic Plasmas And Effects of Compressibility

TL;DR

This study investigates how turbulence and compressibility influence magnetic reconnection rates in relativistic plasmas through 3D simulations, revealing that turbulence can make reconnection resistivity-independent and that compressibility significantly alters reconnection dynamics.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the effects of turbulence and compressibility on relativistic magnetic reconnection, extending non-relativistic theories to relativistic regimes with new simulation insights.

Findings

Reconnection rate becomes resistivity-independent due to turbulence.

Compressible turbulence modifies the reconnection rate.

Maximum reconnection rate around 0.05 to 0.1, potentially higher with larger injection scales.

Abstract

We report turbulence effects on magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas using 3-dimensional relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics simulations. We found reconnection rate became independent of the plasma resistivity due to turbulence effects similarly to non-relativistic cases. We also found compressible turbulence effects modified the turbulent reconnection rate predicted in non-relativistic incompressible plasmas; The reconnection rate saturates and even decays as the injected velocity approaches to the Alfv\'en velocity. Our results indicate the compressibility cannot be neglected when compressible component becomes about half of incompressible mode occurring when the Alfv\'en Mach number reaches about $0.3$. The obtained maximum reconnection rate is around $0.05$ to $0.1$, which will be able to reach around $0.1$ to $0.2$ if injection scales are comparable to the sheet length.