Thermal-inertial effects on magnetic reconnection in relativistic pair plasmas
arXiv:1402.1115 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.045001
Abstract
The magnetic reconnection process is studied in relativistic pair plasmas when the thermal and inertial properties of the magnetohydrodynamical fluid are included. We find that in both Sweet-Parker and Petschek relativistic scenarios there is an increase of the reconnection rate owing to the thermal-inertial effects, both satisfying causality. To characterize the new effects we define a thermal-inertial number which is independent of the relativistic Lundquist number, implying that reconnection can be achieved even for vanishing resistivity as a result of only thermal-inertial effects. The current model has fundamental importance for relativistic collisionless reconnection, as it constitutes the simplest way to get reconnection rates faster than those accessible with the sole resistivity.
Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters; 1 figure; Relativistic plasma physics
References in corpus (5)
- Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
- Two-dimensional MHD simulations of relativistic magnetic reconnection
- Resistive Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
- Generalized Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Equations for Pair and Electron-Ion Plasmas
- The role of reconnection in the pulsar magnetosphere
Cited by in corpus (34)
- The interplay of magnetically-dominated turbulence and magnetic reconnection in producing nonthermal particles
- Relativistic magnetic reconnection in pair plasmas and its astrophysical applications
- Scaling of magnetic reconnection in relativistic collisionless plasmas
- On the Value of the Reconnection Rate
- Particle acceleration in astrophysical jets
- Magnetic Reconnection as a Mechanism for Energy Extraction from Rotating Black Holes
- Recent Progress on Particle Acceleration and Reconnection Physics during Magnetic Reconnectionin the Magnetically-dominated Relativistic Regime
- Magnetic Energy Release, Plasma Dynamics, and Particle Acceleration during Relativistic Turbulent Magnetic Reconnection
- Generalized Magnetofluid Connections in Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics
- Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysical Plasmas: A Powerful Mechanism of Nonthermal Emission
- Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Kerr Spacetime
- Pitch-Angle Anisotropy Imprinted by Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
- Action Principles for Relativistic Extended Magnetohydrodynamics: A Unified Theory of Magnetofluid Models
- Hydrodynamic and kinetic models for spin-1/2 electron-positron quantum plasmas: Annihilation interaction, helicity conservation, and wave dispersion in magnetized plasmas
- Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection in Curved Spacetime and the Effect of Black Hole Rotation
- Ultrafast Variability in AGN Jets: Intermittency and Lighthouse Effect
- Generalized Magnetofluid Connections in Pair Plasmas
- Magnetic reconnection under centrifugal and gravitational electromotive forces
- Self-consistent multidimensional Penrose process driven by magnetic reconnection
- A Maximum Entropy Principle for inferring the Distribution of 3D Plasmoids
- Gravitational electromotive force in magnetic reconnection around Schwarzschild black holes
- Modification of magnetohydrodynamic waves by the relativistic Hall effect
- Phase Diagrams of Forced Magnetic Reconnection in Taylor's Model
- Spin-electron-acoustic waves and solitons in high-density degenerate relativistic plasmas
- Isotropization of the Quark Gluon Plasma
- Radiative Back-Reaction on Charged Particle Motion in the Dipole Magnetosphere of Neutron Stars
- On the structure of relativistic hydrodynamics for hot plasmas
- Relativistic hydrodynamic model with the average reverse gamma factor evolution for the degenerate plasmas: high-density ion-acoustic solitons
- Generalized general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic equations for plasmas of active galactic nuclei in the era of the Event Horizon Telescope
- Microscopic model for relativistic hydrodynamics of ideal plasmas
- Impact of temperature asymmetry and small fraction of static positive ions on the relaxed states of a relativistic hot pair plasma
- Yet Another Modification of Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Waves: Electron Thermal Inertia
- Anisotropic pressure effects in hydrodynamic description of waves propagating parallel to the magnetic field in relativistically hot plasmas
- Non-ideal fields solve the injection problem in relativistic reconnection