Observations of electron phase-space holes driven during magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma
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Author(s)
Katz, Noam Karasov
Le, A.
Fox, William R.
Porkolab, Miklos
Egedal-Pedersen, Jan
Date Issued
March 2012
Journal
Physics of Plasmas
Publisher
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Citation
Fox, W., M. Porkolab, J. Egedal, N. Katz, and A. Le. “Observations of electron phase-space holes driven during magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma.” Physics of Plasmas 19, no. 3 (2012): 032118.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This work presents detailed experimental observations of electron phase-space holes driven during magnetic reconnection events on the Versatile Toroidal Facility. The holes are observed to travel on the order of or faster than the electron thermal speed, and are of large size scale, with diameter of order 60 Debye lengths. In addition, they have 3D spheroidal structure with approximately unity aspect ratio. We estimate the direct anomalous resistivity due to ion interaction with the holes and find it to be too small to affect the reconnection rate; however, the holes may play a role in reining in a tail of accelerated electrons and they indicate the presence of other processes in the reconnection layer, such as electron energization and electron beam formation.
Description
Author's final manuscript February 10, 2012
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Plasma Science and Fusion Center
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3692224
