Physical Review Letters -- March 18, 2004 -- Volume 92, Issue 11, pp. 115001


Electromagnetic Fluctuations during Fast Reconnection in a Laboratory Plasma
Hantao Ji, Stephen Terry, Masaaki Yamada, Russell Kulsrud, Aleksey Kuritsyn, and Yang Ren
Princton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543

(Received 29 January 2003; published 18 March 2004)

Experimental evidence for a positive correlation is established between the magnitude of electromagnetic fluctuations up to the lower-hybrid frequency range and enhancement of reconnection rates in a well-controlled laboratory plasma. The fluctuations belong to the right-hand polarized whistler wave branch, propagating obliquely to the reconnecting magnetic field, with a phase velocity comparable to the relative drift velocity between electrons and ions. The measured short coherence lengths indicate their strongly nonlinear nature.

PACS: 52.35.Vd, 52.35.Qz, 52.35.Ra, 52.72.+v

Full paper: pdf file (292 Kb).

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