SM028-07
Laboratory verification of electron-scale diffusion regions modulated by a three-dimensional instability

Friday, 11 December 2020: 05:54
Virtual
Samuel Greess1, Jan Egedal1, Joseph Olson2, Adam Stanier3, William S Daughton4, Ari Le3, Rachel Myers1, Alexander Millet-Ayala1, Michael Clark1, John Wallace1, Douglass Endrizzi1 and Cary Forest1, (1)University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, (2)University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, United States, (3)Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (4)MS-F699, Plasma Theory and App, Los Alamos, NM, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
During magnetic reconnection, the electron fluid decouples from the magnetic field within narrow current layers, and theoretical models for this process can be distinguished in terms of their predicted current layer widths. In agreement with numerical and theoretical results, we present observations from the Terrestrial Reconnection EXperiment (TREX) that confirm the presence of electron scale current layer widths. Although the layers are modulated by a current-driven instability, the narrow experimental current layers are consistent with a 3D simulation for which off-diagonal terms in the electron pressure tensor are responsible for fast reconnection. Further analysis of TREX’s new toroidal Bdot probe array will be included. This work was supported by DOE funds DE-SC0019153, DE-SC0013032, DOE fund DE-SC0018266, and DE-SC0010463, NASA fund 80NSSC18K1231, and by a fellowship from the Center for Space and Earth Science (CSES) at LANL.
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