| In this dissertation, important questions related to the subject of magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma physics process, are investigated in the well-controlled laboratory setting of the Magnetic Reconnection eXperiment (MRX). The effects of global boundary conditions and plasma resistivity on the reconnection process are studied by changing the separation between the two flux-cores that are used to drive reconnection in MRX, varying the capacitor bank energy, and the gas fill pressure. The reconnection rate is observed to decrease as the flux-care spacing is increased. The reconnection rate is proportional to the effective plasma resistivity divided by an average current sheet thickness. The enhancement of plasma resistivity in low-collisionality regimes results in an increase of the reconnection rate. The current sheet thickness increases as the flux-core separation is made larger, leading to a reduction in the reconnection rate. The detailed reconnection dynamics is analyzed based on a generalized Sweet-Parker model. Resistivities in the collisional regimes with and without guide field are observed to be equal to the parallel and transverse Spitzer values, respectively. Measurements of the ion temperature during reconnection have been performed and the role of different ion heating mechanisms is discussed based on energy balance analysis. A burst mega-hertz planar laser-induced fluorescence diagnostic for plasma turbulence imaging has been developed and a background subtraction concept has been tested on a helicon plasma source. |
