Matching experimental reconnection to multidimensional kinetic simulations *

The normalized rate of reconnection is a measure of the upstream plasma inflow velocity compared to the local Alfven velocity. For large systems this rate is typically on the order of 0.1 but can become larger as system size decreases. Numerical and experimental results for Terrestrial Reconnection EXperiment (TREX) are applied in tandem to elucidate the qualities of reconnection in a low-density environment.  Prior TREX experimental results document how the rate of reconnection varies relative to the size of the system [1]. Here we present new simulation results demonstrating agreement with the experimental rate scaling.  Further new analyses exhibiting the matching between TREX simulations and the TREX experiment will also be shown.

[1] Olson et al., JPP (2021) 87, 3, 175870301.