title: Self-feeding turbulent magnetic reconnection on macroscopic scales.
abstract: Within a MHD approach we find magnetic reconnection to progress in two entirely different ways. The first is well known: the laminar Sweet-Parker process. But a second, completely different and chaotic reconnection process is possible. This regime has properties of immediate practical relevance: (i) it is much faster, developing on scales of the order of the Alfvén time, and (ii) the areas of reconnection become distributed chaotically over a macroscopic region. The onset of the faster process is the formation of closed-circulation patterns where the jets going out of the reconnection regions turn around and force their way back in, carrying along copious amounts of magnetic flux.
authors.affiliation: Centrum voor Plasma-Astrofysica, Departement Wiskunde, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lapenta