Plasma Physics Seminar ( Phys 769)

Dr. Will Fox, MIT Magnetic Reconnection Experiments on the MIT Versatile Toroidal Facility I will present recent results from our studies of magnetic reconnection on the Versatile Toroidal Facility (VTF) at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. VTF is a toroidal experiment, and we study reconnection in the regime of large guide (toroidal) field. We have found a regime in which the reconnection has a spontaneous, or bursty, character, which makes the experiment ideal for studying mechanisms for transition from slow to fast reconnection. I will focus on our studies of electrostatic fluctuations, high energy electrons, and asymmetric (3-D) effects during our reconnection events. Within the wide variety of electrostatic fluctuations that we have observed, we believe we have identified electron phase space holes: non-linear, turbulent structures which are a saturated state of the two-stream instability. (These have also been observed by satellites, including during reconnection in the magnetosphere.) In addition, we routinely observe the creation of a population of high energy electrons (> 10 Te) by reconnection events; we believe these electrons are the drivers of many of these modes. Return to main page