Experimental Demonstration of the Collisionless Plasmoid Instability below the Ion Kinetic Scale during Magnetic Reconnection
Open Access
- 20 June 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 116 (25), 255001
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.116.255001
Abstract
The spontaneous formation of magnetic islands is observed in driven, antiparallel magnetic reconnection on the Terrestrial Reconnection Experiment. We here provide direct experimental evidence that the plasmoid instability is active at the electron scale inside the ion diffusion region in a low collisional regime. The experiments show the island formation occurs at a smaller system size than predicted by extended magnetohydrodynamics or fully collisionless simulations. This more effective seeding of magnetic islands emphasizes their importance to reconnection in naturally occurring 3D plasmas.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
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