Turbulent Reconnection in Relativistic Plasmas And Effects of Compressibility

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.