Collisionless magnetic reconnection in curved spacetime and the effect of black hole rotation

Luca Comisso and Felipe A. Asenjo
Phys. Rev. D 97, 043007 – Published 12 February 2018

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection in curved spacetime is studied by adopting a general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic model that retains collisionless effects for both electron-ion and pair plasmas. A simple generalization of the standard Sweet-Parker model allows us to obtain the first-order effects of the gravitational field of a rotating black hole. It is shown that the black hole rotation acts to increase the length of azimuthal reconnection layers, thus leading to a decrease of the reconnection rate. However, when coupled to collisionless thermal-inertial effects, the net reconnection rate is enhanced with respect to what would happen in a purely collisional plasma due to a broadening of the reconnection layer. These findings identify an underlying interaction between gravity and collisionless magnetic reconnection in the vicinity of compact objects.

  • Figure
  • Received 20 September 2017
  • Corrected 22 November 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.043007

© 2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsPlasma Physics

Corrections

22 November 2019

Correction: Equation (28) contained a minor error and has been fixed.

Authors & Affiliations

Luca Comisso1,* and Felipe A. Asenjo2,†

  • 1Department of Astrophysical Sciences and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
  • 2Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago 7941169, Chile

  • *lcomisso@princeton.edu
  • felipe.asenjo@uai.cl

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 4 — 15 February 2018

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