Synchrotron Pair Production Equilibrium in Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is ubiquitous in astrophysical systems, and in many such systems, the plasma suffers from significant cooling due to synchrotron radiation. We study relativistic magnetic reconnection in the presence of strong synchrotron cooling, where the ambient magnetization σ is high and the magnetic compactness ℓB of the system is of order unity. In this regime, e± pair production from synchrotron photons is inevitable, and this process can regulate the magnetization σ surrounding the current sheet.