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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