Recreating Magnetopause Reconnection in Simulations and the Laboratory: New Results from the Terrestrial Reconnection Experiment (TREX)

Magnetic reconnection at the day-side magnetopause is thought to occur primarily in the collisionless reconnection regime, which leads to the development of specific features of the reconnection region that have been observed by the Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission (MMS) [1]. These features have also been noted in 2-D slab VPIC simulations [2], but until recently they have not been reproduced in laboratory experiments. In 2017, the Terrestrial Reconnection Experiment (TREX), part of the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL), successfully observed the features of collisionless reconnection, including extended in-plane current jets, thin out-of-plane current layers, and long collision times. TREX's most recent run in the summer of 2018 probed deeper into this regime with an improved diagnostic suite. These experimental runs have been done concurrently with simulations of the TREX environment using the newly developed cylindrical VPIC code. Results from these latest experiments and simulations will be presented and compared.

[1] Burch, J. L. et al. Electron-scale measurements of magnetic reconnection in space. Science (80-. ). 352, (2016).

[2] Le, A. et al. Transition in electron physics of magnetic reconnection in weakly collisional plasma. J. Plasma Phys. 81, 305810108 (2015).