Speaker
Jack Davies Hare
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/O4.404.pdf
An Experimental Platform for Pulsed-Power Driven Magnetic
Reconnection
J. D. Hare1 , L. G. Suttle1 , S. V. Lebedev1 , N. F. Loureiro2 , A. Ciardi3 , J. P. Chittenden1 ,
T. Clayson1 , S. J. Eardley1 , C. Garcia1 , J. W. D. Halliday1 , R. A. Smith1 ,
N. Stuart1 , F. Suzuki-Vidal1 , E. R. Tubman1
1 Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
2 Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge MA 02139, USA
3 Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research
University, CNRS, UMR 8112, LERMA, F-75005, Paris, France
We describe a versatile pulsed-power driven platform for magnetic reconnection experiments,
based on exploding wire arrays driven in parallel [1-4]. This platform produces inherently mag-
netised plasma flows for the duration of the MAGPIE generator current pulse (1.4 MA, 500 ns),
resulting in the formation of a long-lasting reconnection layer. The layer exists for long enough
to allow for 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. These
diagnostics include interferometry, Thomson scattering and Faraday rotation imaging.
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 [1] and
carbon wires [2,3], in which the parameters of the inflows, and of the layer which forms, are
significantly different. For aluminium plasmas, the ram pressure dominates over the magnetic
and thermal pressures in the flows, and for carbon the magnetic, thermal and ram pressures are
approximately equal. By moving the electrodes inside the wire arrays, we change how strongly
the inflows are driven [4], which enables us to study both symmetric reconnection in a range of
different regimes, and asymmetric reconnection.
[1] Suttle, L. G., Hare, J. D., Lebedev, S. V. et. al. (2016). PRL, 116, 225001
[2] Hare, J. D., Suttle, L. G., Lebedev, S. V. et. al. (2017). PRL, 118, 85001
[3] Hare, J. D., Lebedev, S. V., Suttle, L. G. et. al. (2017). PoP, 24, 102703
[4] Hare, J. D., Suttle, L. G., Lebedev, S. V. et. al. (2018). Accepted by PoP. arxiv:1711.06534
