Physical Review Letters -- April 13, 1998 -- Volume 80, Issue 15, pp. 3256-3259
Experimental Test of the Sweet-Parker Model of Magnetic Reconnection
- Hantao Ji, Masaaki Yamada, Scott Hsu, and Russell Kulsrud
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543
(Received 29 September 1997)
We report a quantitative experimental test of the Sweet-Parker model of magnetic reconnection in a controlled laboratory plasma. It is found that the observed reconnection rate can be explained by a generalized Sweet-Parker model which incorporates compressibility, downstream pressure, and the effective resistivity. The latter is significantly enhanced over its classical values in the collisionless limit. © 1998 The American Physical Society
PACS: 52.30.Jb, 94.30.Lr, 96.60.Rd
Full paper: pdf file (222 Kb)
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