Towards a General Relativistic Approach to the Rate of Magnetic Reconnection

Theoretical understanding of magnetic reconnection has come a long way in recent years. The first models used to predict the rate of reconnection could not self-consistently describe fast and explosive reconnection which is believed to power high energy emissions throughout the universe. Now, the cause of fast reconnection is understood for many of the cases we observe across our solar system. However, in describing magnetic reconnection in extreme astrophysical plasmas, theoretical work has been limited to the general relativistic extension of older theories, which are not applicable to the explosions that are likely to produce observable signatures. Our modern understanding of magnetic reconnection finds the overall geometry of the system to be the primary determining factor of the reconnection rate [Liu et al., PRL, 118, 085101, 2017], due to the tension force acting on the plasma inflow and outflow. In order to explain magnetic explosions in extreme astrophysical regimes, we have taken the first steps towards generalizing this novel geometric approach to include the effects of spacetime curvature. Here, we use this approach to address the question of the rate of reconnection in a freely falling framing. We find that spacetime curvature has two qualitatively distinct effects: the effect of tidal force, as well as a purely spatial effect in which the distortion of space causes the magnetic field lines to bend.