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Published Online: 09 March 2018
Accepted: January 2018

An experimental platform for pulsed-power driven magnetic reconnection

Physics of Plasmas 25, 055703 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5016280
J. D. Hare1,a),b), L. G. Suttle1, S. V. Lebedev1,c), N. F. Loureiro2, A. Ciardi3, J. P. Chittenden1, T. Clayson1, S. J. Eardley1, C. Garcia1, J. W. D. Halliday1, T. Robinson1, R. A. Smith1, N. Stuart1, F. Suzuki-Vidal1, and E. R. Tubman1
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Abstract
We describe a versatile pulsed-power driven platform for magnetic reconnection experiments, based on the exploding wire arrays driven in parallel [Suttle et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 225001 (2016)]. This platform produces inherently magnetised plasma flows for the duration of the generator current pulse (250 ns), resulting in a long-lasting reconnection layer. The layer exists for long enough to allow the evolution of complex processes such as plasmoid formation and movement to be diagnosed by a suite of high spatial and temporal resolution laser-based diagnostics. We can access a wide range of magnetic reconnection regimes by changing the wire material or moving the electrodes inside the wire arrays. We present results with aluminium and carbon wires, in which the parameters of the inflows and the layer that forms are significantly different. By moving the electrodes inside the wire arrays, we change how strongly the inflows are driven. This enables us to study both symmetric reconnection in a range of different regimes and asymmetric reconnection.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant No. EP/N013379/1 and by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Award Nos. DE-F03-02NA00057 and DE-SC-0001063. A.C. and N.F.L. were supported by LABEX [email protected] with French state funds managed by the ANR within the Investissements d'Avenir programme under Reference No. ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02. N.F.L. was supported by the NSF-DOE partnership in basic plasma science and engineering, Award No. DE-SC0016215.

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