Anomalous Heating and Plasmoid Formation in a Driven Magnetic Reconnection Experiment
Abstract
We present a detailed study of magnetic reconnection in a quasi-two-dimensional pulsed-power driven laboratory experiment. Oppositely directed magnetic fields T), advected by supersonic, sub-Alfv\'enic carbon plasma flows km/s), are brought together and mutually annihilate inside a thin current layer ( mm). Temporally and spatially resolved optical diagnostics, including interferometry, Faraday rotation imaging and Thomson scattering, allow us to determine the structure and dynamics of this layer, the nature of the inflows and outflows and the detailed energy partition during the reconnection process. We measure high electron and ion temperatures eV, eV), far in excess of what can be attributed to classical (Spitzer) resistive and viscous dissipation. We observe the repeated formation and ejection of plasmoids, which we interpret as evidence of two-fluid effects in our experiment.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.09234,
title = {Anomalous Heating and Plasmoid Formation in a Driven Magnetic Reconnection Experiment},
author = {J. D. Hare and L. Suttle and S. V. Lebedev and N. F. Loureiro and A. Ciardi and G. C. Burdiak and J. P. Chittenden and T. Clayson and C. Garcia and N. Niasse and T. Robinson and R. A. Smith and N. Stuart and F. Suzuki-Vidal and G. F. Swadling and J. Ma and J. Wu and Q. Yang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.09234},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in PRL, expected 17th Febuary 2017. 6 pages, 5 figures