title: Experimental Demonstration of the Collisionless Plasmoid Instability below the Ion Kinetic Scale during Magnetic Reconnection.
abstract: The spontaneous formation of magnetic islands is observed in driven, antiparallel magnetic reconnection on the Terrestrial Reconnection Experiment. We here provide direct experimental evidence that the plasmoid instability is active at the electron scale inside the ion diffusion region in a low collisional regime. The experiments show the island formation occurs at a smaller system size than predicted by extended magnetohydrodynamics or fully collisionless simulations. This more effective seeding of magnetic islands emphasizes their importance to reconnection in naturally occurring 3D plasmas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Olson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Egedal
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Greess
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Endrizzi
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Flanagan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Milhone
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wallace
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weisberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: C B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Forest