Theory and Applications of Non-relativistic and Relativistic Turbulent Reconnection

Realistic astrophysical environments are turbulent due to the extremely high Reynolds numbers of the flows. Therefore, the theories intended for describing astrophysical reconnection should not ignore the effects of turbulence. Turbulence is known to change the nature of many physical processes dramatically and in this review we claim that magnetic reconnection is not an exception. We stress that not only astrophysical turbulence is ubiquitous, but also the outflows from magnetic reconnection induce turbulence affecting the rate of turbulent reconnection. Thus turbulence must be accounted for any realistic astrophysical reconnection set up. We argue that due to the similarities of MHD turbulence in relativistic and non-relativistic cases the theory of magnetic reconnection developed for the non-relativistic case can be extended to the relativistic case and we provide numerical simulations that support this conjecture. We also provide quantitative comparisons of the theoretical predictions and results of numerical experiments, including the situations when turbulent reconnection is self-driven, i.e. the turbulence in the system is generated by the reconnection process itself. In addition, we consider observational testing of turbulent reconnection as well as numerous implications of the theory. The former includes the Sun and solar wind reconnection, while the latter include the process of reconnection diffusion induced by turbulent reconnection, the acceleration of energetic particles, bursts of turbulent reconnection related to black hole sources and gamma ray bursts. Finally, we explain why turbulent reconnection cannot be explained by turbulent resistivity or derived through the mean field approach. We also argue that the tearing reconnection transfers to fully turbulent reconnection in 3D astrophysically relevant settings with realistically high Reynolds numbers.