Experimental Test of the Sweet-Parker Model of Magnetic Reconnection
- 13 April 1998
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 80 (15) , 3256-3259
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.80.3256
Abstract
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.Keywords
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