Experimental Test of the Sweet-Parker Model of Magnetic Reconnection
Authors: Hantao Ji, Masaaki Yamada, Scott Hsu, and Russell Kulsrud
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 cannot be explained by the Sweet-Parker model unless the model is generalized to incorporate compressibility, downstream pressure, and the effective resistivity. The latter is significantly enhanced over its classical values in the collisionless limit.