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Magnetic reconnection changes connectivity between magnetic field lines. It requires departure from smooth magnetic flux freezing, for example through finite resistivity or other nonideal terms concentrated in a current sheet. Ideal viscous magnetic relaxation dissipates mechanical energy while retaining frozen connectivity, so viscosity alone does not provide reconnection.

Magnetic relaxation converts magnetic energy into material motion through the Lorentz force density, and dissipates the resulting kinetic energy through viscosity. In a perfect conductor, magnetic flux freezing preserves field-line connectivity throughout every smooth stage. A regular limiting state has zero velocity and is a magnetostatic equilibrium, but its magnetic field can contain current sheets. Conservation of one global magnetic helicity is weaker than preservation of the complete frozen field-line structure.

For background shear $\Omega y\hat{\mathbf{x}}$ and uniform field $B_0\hat{\mathbf{x}}$, first-order smoothing gives the magnetic shearing-wave amplitude equationIf magnetic relaxation is fast compared with shear, $c_y,c_z\simeq i{k}_x{B}_0(v_y,v_z)/(\eta K^2)$ after free transients decay. Thus the doubled Fourier-mode electromotive quantity $\mathcal{E}=\mathrm{Re}(v_y{c}_z^{\ast }-v_z{c}_y^{\ast })$ is $-B_{0}H/(\eta K^2)$, where $H=i{k}_x(v_y{v}_z^{\ast }-v_z{v}_y^{\ast })$. The spatially averaged mean-field electromotive force of real waves has an extra factor $1/2$. Using the helicity invariant of an inviscid shearing wave, and assuming the approximation holds uniformly in time with $\Omega k_x\ne 0$, givesIndeed $K^2=A+{\Omega }^2{k}_x^2{t}^2$, $A=k_x^2+k_z^2$, and substitution $z=|\Omega k_x|t/\sqrt{A}$ uses ${\int }_{-\infty }^{\infty }(1+z^2{)}^{-2}dz=\pi /2$.