Regimes of magnetic reconnection in colliding laser-produced magnetized plasma bubbles

TL;DR

This study uses particle-in-cell simulations to explore how magnetic reconnection varies with plasma conditions in colliding laser-produced plasma bubbles, revealing different regimes and effects of resistivity and density.

Contribution

It provides a detailed multiparametric analysis of magnetic reconnection regimes in laser-produced plasmas, highlighting the influence of plasma parameters on reconnection behavior.

Findings

Rapid, multi-plasmoid reconnection occurs at low resistivity and density.

Increased resistivity slows reconnection and stabilizes plasmoid formation.

Higher background density can prevent reconnection even in collisionless regimes.

Abstract

We conduct a multiparametric study of driven magnetic reconnection relevant to recent experiments on colliding magnetized laser produced plasmas using particle-in-cell simulations. Varying the background plasma density, plasma resistivity, and plasma bubble geometry, the 2D simulations demonstrate a rich variety of reconnection behavior and show the coupling between magnetic reconnection and the global hydrodynamical evolution of the system. We consider both the collision between two radially expanding bubbles where reconnection is seeded by the pre-existing X-point, and the collision between two flows in a quasi-1D geometry with initially anti-parallel fields where reconnection must be initiated by the tearing instability. In both geometries, at a baseline case of low-collisionality and low background density, the current sheet is strongly compressed to below scale of the ion-skin-depth scale, and rapid, multi-plasmoid reconnection results. Increasing the plasma resistivity, we observe a collisional slow-down of reconnection and stabilization of plasmoid instability for Lundquist numbers less than approximately $S \sim 10^3$. Secondly, increasing the background plasma density modifies the compressibility of the plasma and can also slow-down or even prevent reconnection, even in completely collisionless regimes, by preventing the current sheet from thinning down to the scale of the ion-skin depth. These results have implications for understanding recent and future experiments, and signatures for these processes for proton-radiography diagnostics of these experiments are discussed.