Stabilization of Magnetic Reconnection in Relativistic Current Sheet

Abstract

Recently, magnetic reconnection, where a relativistically hot plasma is confined by a strong magnetic field, has received great attention in relation to astrophysical objects (e.g., pulsar magnetosphere and magnetar). However, reconnection with relativistic high-speed drift current in the plasma sheet has not been investigated yet. Thus, from both the theoretical and computational points of view, we studied the growth rate of relativistic reconnection for the high-speed drift current in a relativistically hot plasma sheet. Consequently, we argue that, contrary to the conventional understanding of the fast energy dissipation by the relativistic reconnection, the growth of magnetic reconnection is suppressed.

10 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Formation of Hard Power-laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
• Dissipation of the striped pulsar wind

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Reconnection and particle acceleration in 3D current sheet evolution in moderately-magnetized astrophysical pair plasma
• Efficiency of Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Magnetic Reconnection
• Nonlinear Explosive Magnetic Reconnection in a Collisionless System
• Streaming instability in neutron star magnetospheres: No indication of soliton-like waves
• Collisionless tearing instability in relativistic non-thermal pair plasma and its application to MHD turbulence
• Collisionless tearing instability in a relativistic pair plasma with a power-law distribution function
• Fully kinetic shearing-box simulations of magnetorotational turbulence in 2D and 3D. I. Pair plasmas
• Transition to Petschek Reconnection in Subrelativistic Pair Plasmas: Implications for Particle Acceleration