2018/01/18 by Luca Comisso, Felipe A. Asenjo
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Computer science #Geometry #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Magnetic field #Magnetic reconnection #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Rotation (mathematics) #Space (punctuation) #Spacetime #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.97.043007
published as Phys. Rev. D 97, 043007 (2018) · Accepted for publication in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2018/01/18 · openalex publication_date 2018/02/12 · arxiv updated 2018/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.