We study the effects of turbulence on magnetic reconnection using
three-dimensional numerical simulations. This is the first attempt to test a
model of fast magnetic reconnection proposed by Lazarian & Vishniac (1999),
which assumes the presence of weak, small-scale magnetic field structure near
the current sheet. This affects the rate of reconnection by reducing the
transverse scale for reconnection flows and by allowing many independent flux
reconnection events to occur simultaneously. We performed a number of
simulations to test the dependencies of the reconnection speed, defined as the
ratio of the inflow velocity to the Alfven speed, on the turbulence power, the
injection scale and resistivity. Our results show that turbulence significantly
affects the topology of magnetic field near the diffusion region and increases
the thickness of the outflow region. We confirm the predictions of the Lazarian
& Vishniac model. In particular, we report the growth of the reconnection speed
proportional to ~ V^2, where V is the amplitude of velocity at the injection
scale. It depends on the injection scale l as ~ (l/L)^(2/3), where L is the
size of the system, which is somewhat faster but still roughly consistent with
the theoretical expectations. We also show that for 3D reconnection the Ohmic
resistivity is important in the local reconnection events only, and the global
reconnection rate in the presence of turbulence does not depend on it.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
