Implementation of a drive cylinder for low collisional experiments on magnetic reconnection

P Gradney; J Egedal; I Barnhill; R Flores-García; S Greess; C Kuchta; J Olson; J Wallace; X Yu; C Forest

doi:10.1063/5.0175812

Implementation of a drive cylinder for low collisional experiments on magnetic reconnection

Rev Sci Instrum. 2023 Dec 1;94(12):123503. doi: 10.1063/5.0175812.

Authors

P Gradney¹, J Egedal¹, I Barnhill¹, R Flores-García¹, S Greess¹, C Kuchta¹, J Olson¹, J Wallace¹, X Yu¹, C Forest¹

Affiliation

¹ University of Wisconsin Madison Physics Department, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.

PMID: 38085053
DOI: 10.1063/5.0175812

Abstract

For most laboratory plasma experiments, Coulomb collisions between the particle species are sufficiently frequent that the particle distribution functions are relaxed to a near-Maxwellian form. This hampers the applicability of such experiments to phenomena observed in tenuous and near-collisionless space plasma. The Terrestrial Reconnection EXperiment (TREX) at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory aims to study collisionless reconnection for parameters relevant to the Earth's magnetosphere. To reduce the role of collisional effects, a reconnection Drive Cylinder has been developed, which increases both the effective system size of the TREX configuration and the rate at which reconnection can be driven. These two effects now permit TREX to reach a kinetic reconnection regime where collisional effects are minimized. The Drive Cylinder is comprised of 12 single loop drive-coils connected in parallel to a 10 kV capacitor bank. Insulated sheets of aluminum are applied to smooth the magnetic fields and enhance the drive efficiency. Following is a description of the technical details and performance of the Drive Cylinder.