Thermal-Inertial Effects on Relativistic Asymmetric Magnetic Reconnection

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermal-inertial effects influence relativistic asymmetric magnetic reconnection, showing that these effects can enhance reconnection rates and depend on initial plasma asymmetries, with implications for plasma system modeling.

Contribution

It generalizes previous models by incorporating thermal-inertial effects into relativistic asymmetric reconnection, revealing their impact on reconnection rates and plasma asymmetry dependence.

Findings

Thermal-inertial effects increase reconnection rates.

Different initial asymmetries lead to varying reconnection rates.

Reconnection rate definitions depend on plasma magnetization.

Abstract

A general description for relativistic magnetic reconnection is given in terms of asymmetric inflow plasma conditions, such as plasma density, velocity magnetic field strength, and their respective thermal-inertial effects. In this work, we show that thermal-inertial effects increase reconnection rates, generalizing previous results. Furthermore, different reconnection rates can be defined depending on the initial asymmetric conditions for the inflow plasma into the reconnection region. We explore two possibilities for reconnection rates, which, depending on the asymmetric magnetization, display different strengths. We discuss the importance on defining appropriate reconnection rates for corresponding asymmetric plasma systems in the context of previous results.