Collisional and collisionless magnetic reconnection

This paper gives an overview of the basic mechanisms of magnetic reconnection. Resistive reconnection is rather well understood. In most hot plasmas of interest, however, collisionless processes are more effective, in particular whistler-mediated reconnection for beta similar to 1 and kinetic Alfven wave-mediated reconnection for beta much less than 1. which have mainly been studied in the framework of two-fluid theory. Results from kinetic modeling by particle simulation are also briefly discussed. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.