Abstract
The present paper studies physical conditions for fast reconnection mechanism involving slow shocks to evolve spontaneously in space (high-temperature) plasmas. This is fundamental for onset mechanisms of geomagnetic substorms and solar flares. It is demonstrated that reconnection evolution strongly depends on effective resistivity available in space plasmas as well as on dimensions of initial current sheet. If a current sheet is sufficiently thin, fast reconnection spontaneously evolves only when resistivity is locally enhanced around X reconnection point. This is because in space plasmas reconnection flows cause vital current concentration locally around X point. For current-driven anomalous resistivity, the resulting resistivity is automatically localized around X point, so fast reconnection mechanism can be realized. On the other hand, for uniform or Spitzer resistivity, any fast reconnection cannot grow; in particular, Spitzer resistivity is reduced around X point because of Joule heating. Regarding reconnection simulations (either fluid or particle), unless numerical resistivities are made negligibly small, they seriously mask the effects of physical resistivity, leading to a misleading conclusion that reconnection evolution is little influenced by plasma resistivity.
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