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Fast magnetic reconnection with the current sheet ejection in the TS‐3 merging experiment
Author(s) -
Hirota Daisuke,
Ono Yasushi,
Arimoto Katsuyuki
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
electrical engineering in japan
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1520-6416
pISSN - 0424-7760
DOI - 10.1002/eej.20067
Subject(s) - current sheet , magnetic reconnection , physics , current (fluid) , lorentz force , magnetic field , toroid , mechanics , condensed matter physics , magnetohydrodynamics , plasma , nuclear physics , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics
The current sheet ejection phenomenon, which causes enhancement of the magnetic reconnection rate, was investigated in the TS‐3 merging experiment at the University of Tokyo. The current sheet was ejected when two coaxial torus plasmas were compressed rapidly by the external force under high‐intensity toroidal field (about 500 G). The magnetic reconnection rate γ increased sharply from 0.14/µs to 0.33/µs right after the ejection out of the X‐point region, while the reconnection rate is low in an initial pileup phase. The current sheet was separated and ejected from the diffusion region by the Lorentz force, j t × B z . We made a new simple current sheet model on the basis of the mass conservation law, and the theoretical curve of the inflow velocity increment u accorded with the experimental one generally. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 152(3): 1–7, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20067