Laboratory Study of Magnetic Reconnection in Lunar-relevant Mini-magnetospheres

Mini-magnetospheres are small ion-scale structures that are well suited to studying kinetic-scale physics of collisionless space plasmas. Such ion-scale magnetospheres can be found on local regions of the Moon, associated with the lunar crustal magnetic field. In this paper, we report on the laborat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2024-07, Vol.969 (2), p.124
Main Authors: Rovige, Lucas, Cruz, Filipe D., Dorst, Robert S., Pilgram, Jessica J., Constantin, Carmen G., Vincena, Stephen, Cruz, Fábio, Silva, Luis O., Niemann, Christoph, Schaeffer, Derek B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anisotropy
Collisionless plasmas
Electric fields
Electron pressure
Electrons
Laboratory astrophysics
Lasers
Lunar surface
Magnetic dipoles
Magnetic fields
Magnetic reconnection
Magnetic studies
Magnetospheres
Microphysics
Moon
Ohm's Law
Pressure effects
Repetition
Space plasmas
The Moon
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Summary:Mini-magnetospheres are small ion-scale structures that are well suited to studying kinetic-scale physics of collisionless space plasmas. Such ion-scale magnetospheres can be found on local regions of the Moon, associated with the lunar crustal magnetic field. In this paper, we report on the laboratory experimental study of magnetic reconnection in laser-driven, lunar-like ion-scale magnetospheres on the Large Plasma Device at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the experiment, a high-repetition rate (1 Hz), nanosecond laser is used to drive a fast-moving, collisionless plasma that expands into the field generated by a pulsed magnetic dipole embedded into a background plasma and magnetic field. The high-repetition rate enables the acquisition of time-resolved volumetric data of the magnetic and electric fields to characterize magnetic reconnection and calculate the reconnection rate. We notably observe the formation of Hall fields associated with reconnection. Particle-in-cell simulations reproducing the experimental results were performed to study the microphysics of the interaction. By analyzing the generalized Ohm’s law terms, we find that the electron-only reconnection is driven by kinetic effects through the electron pressure anisotropy. These results are compared to recent satellite measurements that found evidence of magnetic reconnection near the lunar surface.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/ad4fff