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Experimental Studies Of Magnetic Reconnection, Michael R. Brown

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

Laboratory magnetic reconnection experiments have been performed for nearly 20 years. Elegant experiments by Stenzel and Gekelman [R. L. Stenzel and W. Gekelman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 1055 (1979); W. Gekelman and R. L. Stenzel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 2414 (1985)] focused on the measurement of field quantities with a single movable probe in a highly reproducible plasma. Observations included a very thin current sheet (on the order of c/ωpe), accelerated electrons, and whistler waves. The argon ions were unmagnetized in these experiments. Recent magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) experiments by Yamada and Ono have used merging plasmoids [M. Yamada, Y. Ono, A. …