Status and plan of the FLARE project as a collaborative research facility to study magnetic reconnection and related phenomena*

The FLARE (Facility for LAboratory Reconnection Experiments; flare.pppl.gov) device is a new experiment for the study of magnetic reconnection in the multiple X-line regimes in the reconnection phase diagram [1,2], directly relevant to space, solar, astrophysical, and fusion plasmas. The first plasma operation was successfully conducted to validate the engineering design and to demonstrate access to parameter space beyond its predecessor, MRX (Magnetic Reconnection Experiment). The ongoing construction project at PPPL is to install the device and associated initial diagnostics, and to upgrade the power supplies with associated infrastructure required to provide access to new regimes of magnetic reconnection. The current status and near-term plan will be presented in preparation for the imminent start of an initial operation and research program as a DoE collaborative research facility. Numerical predictions using the state-of-the-art particle-in-cell code, VPIC, will be discussed to guide the first physics operation of FLARE and to interpret the obtained experimental results.

[1] H. Ji and W. Daugton, Physics of Plasmas 18, 111207 (2011).

[2] H. Ji, W. Daughton, J. Jara-Almonte, A. Le, A. Stanier, J. Yoo, Nature Reviews Physics 4, 263 (2022).