Extension of the Selvi et al. (2023) effective resistivity beyond pair plasmas without guide field

Determine how the Selvi et al. (2023) effective resistivity prescription—derived for 2D Harris-sheet reconnection in an electron–positron plasma without a guide field—changes when applied to reconnection with nonzero guide fields and to electron–ion plasmas, and characterize the resulting impact on the resistivity profile and reconnection dynamics.

Background

The effective resistivity used in this paper is adapted from Selvi et al. (2023), which was calibrated on PIC simulations of pair-plasma Harris sheets without guide fields. The authors successfully reproduce kinetic-like reconnection dynamics in this restricted setting using ResRMHD.

However, many astrophysical plasmas have nonzero guide fields and ion–electron composition. The authors explicitly state uncertainty about how their effective resistivity formulation would behave in these broader conditions, highlighting a key open question for generalizing the model.